


We're Gonna Be Zombae

by Clumsy_ninja



Category: Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (Disney Movies)
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, F/M, Football, Rating May Change, Romantic Comedy, Seniors!au, Zero Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22325863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clumsy_ninja/pseuds/Clumsy_ninja
Summary: Tyra Molina is exactly where she wants to be - Seabrook High.  After a very loud entrance, she catches the eye of the school's Golden Zom-boy.  That's right, Zed Necrodopoulus, captain of the football team, the King of Dorks himself.  While they become fast friends, Tyra's web of half-truths combined with her own stubbornness stops them from developing past that.  Will her new opportunity help her get out of her own way?  Even Zed, who is generally the epitome of an open book, clams up when anyone pushes for more explanation for why he and Addison broke up.  Which one of them will cough up the truth first?
Relationships: Zed Necrodopoulus/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

“Who wants to play rugby?”

When Tyra had jumped up on the cafeteria table, only those nearby had looked at her oddly – and even those had looked away almost instantly. The other students at the table had quickly moved somewhere else with their trays, but now that her hands were cupped around her mouth and her usually loud voice had been given an extra push, the entire room was looking at her. From the teens in line to the ones at the tables, all eyes were on her as she paused. No big deal. Less than at a game; at least she had their attention.

A smile flashed across her face before her hands cupped around her mouth again. “That’s right, you heard me. Not a casual game, but to start up a team!” she boomed, dropping her hands as she casually strode the length of the table. Her fellow students were looking at her like she had three heads, but that was fine. Curiosity breeds interest. “A team that has each other’s backs from a bond forged through blood, sweat, and tears! You’ll never have to look for a gym buddy ever again because you’ll have an entire team full of them.”

Still only shifting glances and whispers; even those that had stopped walking to stare at her spectacle had started moving again. Maybe the blood part was too intense for people at the beginning. It really needed to be worked up to. “Come on! Never need to ask anyone to open a jar for you again!”

Crickets.

Even Tyra knew that was lame, and her face twitched with a quick grimace. “Or how about this – never worry about walking around at night on your own, ladies?”

A deep bleat of a laugh behind her caught her attention and she twisted to see a guy in a letterman jacket sneering at the guy he was walking with. Pink. The school had weird colours, that was for sure. “Only guy that would be after her would be a zombie off his z-band,” he mocked, not having noticed she was paying attention. “What a freak.”

“Wow, what an asshole,” she commented at the same volume, projecting across the cafeteria while looking down at the pair. His buddy took a step away as she crossed her oversized flannel-clad arms across her chest, having fixed both of them with a glare. The pink was barely noticeable as the jock turned to face her, his brow drawing down.

“You’re the asshole – taking up a whole table with your feet. Interrupting an entire cafeteria with your rugby bullshit. Nobody cares. Nobody is going to join, and you labeled yourself a weirdo. Good luck being a loser,” he continued, though some of his swagger had been lost, his posture less macho. 

“Whatever, you’re clearly an idiot, but what I meant was, you’re an asshole for using that as some kind of insult.”

The furrow in his brow deepened and the beginnings of a scowl pulled at his mouth as he tried to piece together what she was talking about. Tyra felt she had been right on the money when all that came out of his mouth was, “What?”

“Zombies, z-bands. Like they’re just some kind of monster when the band doesn’t work properly. I thought all this ‘humans are the best’ shit was done like, three years ago. Are you some kind of closeted speciest?” Her head cocked to the side but that didn’t stop the glare she was still boring into his skull. If anything, Tyra was closer to a snarl than he was.

“What?!” he cried, tossing his tray onto the table beside her. The individual plates on it clanked around, and his cupcake tipped onto his artisanal sandwich. By how red his face had gotten, once again she didn’t feel like she had said anything too far from the truth. “My captain is a zombie. You don’t know anything, you dumb bi-“

Whether he had stopped mid-word, or the sound of her feet hitting the ground drowned it out, Tyra didn’t hear him finish his sentence. Jumping from the table to the floor wasn’t much more than a box jump, so she’d executed it the same – both feet planted on the floor in front of him. Straightening up from her bent knees, she hid her amusement as the guy in front of her paled a little. Not well, because one corner of her mouth was pulled up into a small smirk.

“What? Weren’t you in the middle of saying something?” she asked, eyebrow raised. 

Seeing as they were at the same eye level, it was very clear that he gave her a once over. “I, uh…I thought it was just because you were on the table…” he mumbled, not very subtly standing up as straight as possible. 

Her smirk stretched a bit. It wasn’t often someone picked a fight with her without knowing how tall she was, and it clearly had the guy rattled. Tyra had learned that as a general rule, guys didn’t like it when she was the same height as them. “Nope. Still want to insult me? Make another dig about zombies?” The bite had left her tone, and now she was just toying with him. 

Movement behind him caught her attention, and she just noticed the pale skin and green hair before a hand clamped down on her prey’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, he’ll be running some extra laps at practice for that comment.” While the voice was steady and light, she could see the grip on his shoulder dug in just enough to hurt. “Go sit down.”

As the not-speciest slunk off, she tucked a dark, wavy lock behind her ear and instantly felt stupid. Zed Necrodopolous. The giant that appeared to his teammate’s rescue had turned to make sure he actually went to sit down before turning a toothy smile on her. “I am so sorry about that. I mean it. He’s getting extra laps, drills – whatever I am allowed to throw at him.” His head shook as he sighed, though he quickly brightened again. “I’m Zed – you must be new?”

As if the person responsible for bridging the zombie-human gap needed to introduce himself. Maybe he didn’t realize that he was famous in certain circles. She could keep it that way. “What gave it away?” she asked with mock shock before rolling her eyes. “Yeah, I’m new. We actually have first period together, but you missed the ‘hey, look at the new girl! She’s new!’ thing.”

He grinned sheepishly, wide shoulders pulling up to his ears. “Yup. I was late. The dog got out and I had to run after him. I’m sure you made it very entertaining.”

Zed was too big to actually sneak into class – other than the clear growth spurt he’d had since freshman year, he was much more muscular than the videos she had seen. If he was captain, he obviously didn’t stop playing football. She figured he must have bulked up to be able to keep playing without Z-ing out. “Implying that because I jump onto tables and disrupt a quiet lunch period, everything I do is more entertaining than an average person?” Tyra asked with her brows raised mockingly. Though his laugh quickly changed her smirk into a grin. 

Damn contagious happiness.

“Yes, yes I am,” he teased, tucking his hands into the pockets of his grey jumpsuit. They didn’t seem to make them for giants, because his ankles were exposed in their entirety. That didn’t stop him from looking cool. “So, somebody actually moved into Seabrook, huh? From where?”

At least he didn’t ask her why. “Utah. Provo, kinda near Salt Lake City. My dad got transferred, and this was cheaper than finding somewhere in the city,” Tyra explained, supplying a one-shouldered shrug for believability. It wasn’t that far off from the truth, but enough that it wasn’t weird.

“Ah, a city girl. That explains the hair.” His smile made it clear he wasn’t actually making fun of her as he gently pulled a lock of blue highlight between his pale fingertips. Zed wound it once around his finger before letting it bounce back amongst the mix of blue and dark brown waves. He was touchy – good to know. 

“You know, as much as it didn’t stand out in my old school, it doesn’t feel like it does here either. I can’t put my finger on why, though…” Tyra tapped a finger against her pursed lips, eyes locked on the green head in front of her before slowly rotating as her eyes landed on the other green-haired zombies in the room. When she completed her three-sixty, he was grinning down at her.

“Yup, I can’t think of a single reason either, but I know exactly what you mean,” he laughed, running a hand through his spiky hair. Zed’s smile dialed back a little as he leaned toward her conspiratorially and dropped his volume. “I don’t know if you noticed when you enrolled here, but we don’t have a ton of sports teams…”

The duo looked around the cafeteria, at the most prim and proper teenagers she had ever seen. She’d been distracted by Zed’s arrival and hadn’t noticed how everyone became disinterested as soon as she stopped being showy. It hadn’t even occurred to her before she started her pitch that it wasn’t very loud. Even the laughter was at a respectable volume. 

Tyra’s shoulders slumped as she sighed. “Yeah, I did notice. I thought it was like, just nobody asking. You don’t even think any zombie girls would want to play?” He must have heard the hope in her voice, because he straightened up and shrugged, though he couldn’t quite meet her eye and his hand moved to adjust his z-band.

The movement attracted her eye, and she noticed the scarring radiating out from the band. It crept up his wrist to the base of his thumb, extending a few inches on either side of his z-band. She had seen the mark in some of the videos, but she hadn’t realized it was permanent. “Was it worth it?” Tyra asked, already knowing what the answer would be.  
Except she was only met with confusion. 

Zed’s head tilted and his brows knit together, pale lips pursed. “You know, hulking out.” She nodded towards his wrist, the pink scar marring his otherwise flawless skin. “Was it worth the scar and detainment? It obviously was, right?” As his questioning eyebrow raised, so did the temperature of her face. 

“How do you know about that?”

Tyra ran her tongue over her teeth. Of course, if he didn’t know he was a bit of a celebrity, why would she know anything? Her arms crossed over her chest as she took a deep breath. “Like, you should know, everyone has a phone. Which meant that video of your games and the z-ing out, you guys getting arrested, and that weird cheer competition thing, all of that was put online. It’s not like the rest of the world forgot you guys existed – you were on the news and stuff. I honestly can’t believe you didn’t know…” she grumbled, though his giant grin was hard to look away from. “So like, you and Addison are kind of famous, and I guess I’m like, kind of a fan, or something. What you did was cool and brave or whatever.”

“So, can we just back that up a sec? Not only am I famous out in the world, and not just in this small town, but what did you call me?” he asked, grin getting more cheeky by the second as he cupped his hand around his ear and leaned closer. “I think I missed it. You’re my what? What I did was what?”

With a groan, she shoved his shoulder, the minute surprise on his face as he nearly stumbled was enough for her to regain her mental footing. “Yeah, I’m a fan in a really loose interpretation of the term; you’re a big shot, risking your life for a better future for your people was really cool. But uh, interesting move, changing minds with cheer?”

Zed burst out laughing and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, if only I’d known that would work, I’d have tried to become a cheerleader instead of a football player. Could have avoided this altogether.” The wrist with the z-band flicked up and wobbled around. She could see the scar was on his inner forearm as well, not just the side with the screen. It must have been killing him the entire time, but he kept playing. Kept winning. 

He got just a little bit cooler.

“But hey, if getting a rugby team formed doesn’t work out, you can always join cheer – change hearts.”

Even though Tyra knew he was joking, her face completely soured. She knew cheerleaders. “Uh, no. They’d make me slim down, and these-“ The slapping of her bare thighs echoed in the large space, and as she pulled her hands away big red handprints could be seen on each leg. “Aren’t just jiggle.” Her thighs looked thick when she sat or stood, but she knew the power in them. The girls on her former team used to try and compare who had more Cs in a thicc thigh contest.

As soon as she saw his wide eyes and brows reaching toward his hairline, she wondered why she had just done that. Being confident was one thing. Weirdly slapping her legs and saying they weren’t all jiggle, that was not something her brain should have let her do. Even a quick glance around them revealed shoulders were up in silent cringe. Tyra closed her eyes as she inhaled deeply, pinching the bridge of her nose. Only after she exhaled did she open them. “Can we pretend I didn’t just say that?”

His surprise had faded to an easy smile in the time since her eyes squeezed shut. “Say what?” he asked innocently, waiting a bit before winking at her. 

Somehow when he winked, she didn’t get creeped out. Quite the opposite, as she had to stop herself from saying oof aloud. “Well, I’m going to go feel dumb somewhere else, and actually eat some food, soooo…see ya around, Zed,” she said, giving a quick wave before turning on her heel and walking quickly in the opposite direction. Even though she had heard him try and say something else, she just walked a little bit faster. Hopefully by the next morning in English he would actually forget she’d done that.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course she wasn’t allowed to pick a station. No, new people had to wait at the front of the class, wait until everyone else filed in, took the best prep stations, and then they got to introduce themselves. At least half the class had already endured the same thing in English and Chemistry – the school wasn’t that big. Backpack over one shoulder, Tyra leaned against the whiteboard as their teacher welcomed everyone to class. Invited them to find a place to call home for the day. Everyone except Tyra. The vaguely annoyed expression on her face morphed into confusion as Zed walked into the classroom. 

Behind the teacher’s back, she pulled a fist away from her neck, head flopping to the side as her tongue lolled out. Gallows humour generally got laughs, and he was grinning at her as he made his way to the back. Right beside an oven. The exact place she had been eyeing since she stepped foot in the room. Great. No way would she get it with Mister Popularity laying claim to it – his station mate would fill up in no time. 

Except he put his bag on the stool beside him, and any time someone looked like they asked to move it, he shook his head. Weird. She didn’t get much time to dwell on it, because once everyone was perched on their stools, their teacher clapped his hands. “Welcome to cooking, seniors! We’ve known each other for the past two weeks, some of you from last year, but some I’ll need to get better acquainted with. Just like we all need to get acquainted with our new student, Tyra Molina!”

Way too enthusiastic, way too proud of his segue. Pushing off the board before he could continue, Tyra shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts – proper pockets, of course – and stood beside him. In the back, Zed leaned forward, chin resting on his fists as he looked on eagerly. Apparently he wasn’t kidding about thinking she was going to be entertaining. 

“So, I’m not sure why I have to do this in every class. Half these people are in my other classes and have already heard my name, though everyone says it wrong. It’s teer-ah, not tye-ra. Think of the jaguar in the Jungle Book.” Blank faces. Seriously? “Don’t lie, we’ve all seen Jungle Book. What was his name? …anyone?” she asked, looking through the class.

“Bagheera.”

“Thank you, Zed. Bagheera. Teer-ah. Great, we all got it. My family just moved here this week, aaaand see me if you want to talk about a rugby team,” she finished, brushing past the teacher to head back to the giant wiggling his eyebrows at her. As she came around beside him, he moved his bag to the floor and she hopped onto the stool. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a dork? Also…” she paused to survey the heads in the class. All on the human spectrum – that was a first. “Are you the only zombie in this class?” 

He flashed a big grin while their teacher started putting the notes on the board. “Yes, yes they have. How did you know?” Zed’s cheek rested on the counter as he leaned down to fish a notebook out of his bag. “And sure, I may be the only zom in this class, but have you ever tried brain in a can? It’s disgusting.”

Cringing at the memory, Tyra nodded and pulled out her book before dropping her backpack on the floor. “Oh my God, yes. Blech. It’s like. Straight ass. Or garbage. Garbage ass.” She couldn’t stop her face screwing up in disgust, as if her body were revolting against the mere thought of that cauliflower.

“I mean…that’s an accurate description but. When and why did you try that?” he asked, one brow arched as high as it could possibly go. 

She’d stuck her foot in her mouth again. Keeping her eyes flicking from the board to her notebook, Tyra shrugged as she jotted down how the different options could affect cook time. “You know, zombies were real – are real – not just science fiction anymore. Who wouldn’t be curious?” Skirting the truth. The best way to lie.

That wasn’t enough explanation for him, because she could see him looking expectantly at her out of the corner of her eye. Even when he slid closer, chin resting on his hand, very much into her personal bubble, Tyra just wrote a little slower. She could have sworn he pouted before sitting up straight and picking up his own pen. 

“You’re kind of weird, huh?” His question startled her, and she shot him a side-eyed glare, only to see him smiling as he took his own notes. Having noticed her looking over he leaned closer, though his eyes were still on the board. “I kind of like it.”

Tyra tried to fight the smile as she rolled her eyes, but there it was when she resumed writing. Her own face really betrayed her like that. He really _was_ a dork. 

Even though she had attempted to tell Mr. Pisano that the whole class didn’t need to go over kitchen safety again because of her, there they were. Reviewing kitchen safety. The proper way to hold a blade, wearing oven mitts. Things anyone who had ever been in a kitchen before in their life would know. He’d broken them into groups of six to go over a checklist – one nobody seemed interested in actually doing – so the class was full of quiet murmuring. If he couldn’t quite tell what they were saying, he wouldn’t know they weren’t talking about safety. 

Tyra was leaning against the counter, skimming the list and wondering who needed to actually be reminded of this, when someone slid up beside her. The counter ran the perimeter of the room, only interrupted by stoves and sinks every few feet. Glancing up at Zed – nobody else was as tall as him – she noticed he deliberately wasn’t looking at her. Just staring out across the room, lips pursed, hands clasped together. 

And she was the weird one? They leaned together in silence for a minute before he nudged her arm with his elbow. When she didn’t react, he nudged again. “How may I help you?”

“I was just wanting to know if you’d want to come watch practice today. See Kyle run his laps, do his extra drills. Just so you know I was serious about the punishment for his big mouth,” Zed offered, leaning over a bit. 

He really had no concept of personal space.

Tyra’s brow raised as she looked up at his smiling face. “Don’t you have a cheerleader to watch you tackle dummies?”

“You use tackle bags in rugby too. Not that we don’t also tackle our players.” Confusion was written all over his face. From the drawn brow to his slight frown.   
“That’s what I meant,” she stated, smiling angelically up at him.

As it clicked, Zed rolled his eyes and shook his head. The easy smile faded from his face as his hands went into his pockets and he looked back out across the room. “We broke up last year, actually. No specific people watching me tackle my dummies.”

Whoops. 

That wasn’t something she had known. Though it did explain why they weren’t glued at the hip like they seemed to be in all the videos. “Oh, uh. Sorry. I didn’t realize. You guys looked really cute together, in the stuff I’d seen. Changed the world a bit. Figured it would be like, a lasting thing.” Tyra’s shoulders pulled up. There went her foot in her mouth again.

He laughed through his nose a little, a bit of pity air, and his smile was back. It didn’t quite reach his eyes this time though. “It’s fine. Not like it would have been in the news or anything.” His hands flew up, fingers flexing to emulate flashing lights for each word. “Local teens break up for ordinary teenage reasons!”

Letting his hands hang in the air for a minute, he grinned over his shoulder at her. “Not very exciting stuff. We just kind of…stopped working? Not in a zombie-human way, just a…person-person way,” Zed explained, shoulder shrugging.

Still, it was clear he wasn’t totally over it. Happy people didn’t lose their shine if they were perfectly fine. Tyra wasn’t about to ask how long it had been, though the question was practically burning on her tongue. Right beside what typical teen thing it had been. Instead, she clenched her jaw a bit to stop them from jumping out of her mouth and patted his arm consolingly. He definitely took football seriously, with how much he must hit the gym. She wasn’t deliberately trying to notice. Honest.

“I’m still not coming though.”


	3. Chapter 3

A week into Seabrook High and Tyra was seriously losing hope of people wanting to form a rugby team. She was at the point of trying to make a guy’s team and lobbying to get them to allow her to play. The odds were low – both the hope of getting a team together and them allowing her to play – but she was determined. At least Kyle had been wrong about her hanging a loser sign around her own neck. 

Zed had meant it when he said he liked her brand of weird and absorbed her into his group of friends. It was still weird to see him signing autographs at the lunch table, but that was fine. Every time he was presented with a picture to sign, he made eye contact with her and gave a little smirk. She was regretting letting him in on the fact he was a little famous. Though it seemed he hadn’t told anyone else, because he only shared the look with her. The fastest inside joke she’d ever made.

Their table was interesting, as the ratio of zombies to humans fluctuated by the day. Always present were Bonzo and Eliza, his friends who were only a little less well known to her as he was. While Bonzo was still a big guy, Zed was a few inches taller, but the creative was still stronger than the jock – Zed winced any time he got a bone-crushing hug. Tyra herself was always trying to duck under his arms; narrowly missing what she felt would be a trip to the nurse. 

Eliza, on the other hand, had taken to her strong opinions and general outspokenness that first day and had snagged a spot beside her in math. At first Tyra had thought she was interested in rugby, and had totally deflated when Eliza had laughed but had gone off on how the school should have at least made a sign-up sheet, done something to assist. They were eye-rolling partners any time they were together, sometimes edging on too dramatic. 

They didn’t have an exact table per se, just that wherever they sat, people congregated. As an outsider, it was clear to Tyra why that was: Bonzo was a big teddy bear, Eliza was a spitfire, and Zed…well, he was full of charisma. How anyone could have ever disliked any of them was beyond her. 

“I give up. Officially,” Tyra groaned, forehead meeting the table with a bang.

“On what, exactly?” How something could be asked so innocuous but have it be implied she was being dramatic was a skill only Eliza possessed.

“Starting a rugby team. The principal said we would have to go too far for games all the time. Even if I found players – which let’s all admit was never happening – we couldn’t play any games.” Having brought her head off the table, it was nestled on her arms, a severe pout on her lips. “This is the worst. It’s the only sport I play. What the heck is going to be on my transcript for senior year now?”

“Well, I’m sorry, and that sucks,” Zed nodded consolingly from across the table. However, his sympathy quickly faded as an innocent grin took over. “But now you have time to come watch practice.”

The entire table groaned, and Eliza’s head lolled back from the force of her eye roll. “Bro, she isn’t going to come watch you guys. It’s been a week of asking her every day. I don’t know why you think she is going to change her mind,” Bonzo sighed, shaking his head. 

Tyra smiled as she bit into her sandwich. It was only vaguely annoying to tell Zed no every day. It had sort of become their thing – he asked nicely, trying to put a different spin on it, and she flatly rejected him every time. It seemed like it was more annoying to everyone else that he didn’t give up. “He’s right. I have zero interest in football, Zed.” She held her hand up, making an O and looking at him through it. “It’s like a safer version of rugby.”

While his friends snickered, Zed huffed. “It’s just different, not safer.”

“Oh yeah? Have people had their finger dangling by a tendon and ripped it off and kept playing football? No.” Even the human faces at the table went a little grey. “Granted, those are professionals. But on my team alone, girls kept playing with broken bones! I almost lost my eye and I kept playing.” 

“I’m sorry you what?” Eliza asked incredulously.

“Yeah, I ended up at the bottom of a pile, with someone’s weight pressing down on my head. With everyone else’s weight on top of them, it nearly popped my eye out.” Tyra used her fist to mimic her eye falling out of her skull before shrugging. Everyone at the table, however, looked at her as if her eyeball had actually fallen onto the table.

Bonzo gave a low whistle before shaking his head. “That’s why she fits in so well. She is zom tough, and just as stubborn as you.”

Tyra cracked up and rolled her eyes. Only she wasn’t joined by Eliza. In fact, all the zombies sitting with them were staring at her. “What? Are humans not allowed to be considered as tough as you guys or what?”

Even Zed took a beat before he was able to respond, pressing his lips together and tilting his head. They made a smacking sound when he opened his mouth to speak. “No, that’s fine just…how did _you_ know that’s what he said?” he asked, eyes studying her like he was seeing somebody new.

Shit. Tyra was so used to Bonzo speaking English that when he spoke Zombie Tongue she hadn’t thought to just smile and nod like the other humans. She had understood and was so used to her dad seamlessly switching between Spanish and English at home that she hadn’t noticed. Half-truth. “When I knew we were moving here, I learned some Zombie Tongue. It’s not that big of a deal, guys…”

Eliza was looking at her funny, and not just the way she did when her brain didn’t filter her mouth properly. “Uh, except it kind of is? Like, how did you even learn it?”   
Beneath the table, Tyra’s knees were rubbing together and she was grateful she was wearing pants so her skin wouldn’t start chafing. “There is such a thing as the internet, guys. You can learn literally anything you want to by a few keystrokes,” she shrugged, stuffing as much of her sandwich into her mouth as possible before clamping her jaws around it. If she was chewing, she couldn’t be talking. That was just rude.

The only one not squinting at her like she had something to hide was Bonzo. His gaze was soft and searching, not suspicious. He must have seen the anxiety building as her shoulders slowly made their way towards her ears because as soon as Zed opened his mouth, a hand clamped onto his shoulder. “She answered, she’s right, and you don’t need to look at her like she is growing another head just because she was polite enough to learn a language that is legitimately only spoken in one place - here. So drop it.” His unusually serious face got through to everyone, as they nodded, and he flashed Tyra a huge smile. That had definitely been in English – she was going to be sure to keep track now.

Everyone except Zed, because he went to open his mouth again, but grimaced when his shoulder was squeezed. “Especially you. You - definitely drop anything you’re annoying her with.”

“Ok, ok! Jeez…” Zed held his hands up in surrender, and everyone started teasing him about football practice.

As they moved on, Tyra felt she could breathe again, and her knees stopped their rubbing. She even joined in on the football jabs, to the point that Zed started groaning. He had stopped looking at her funny, so she figured he’d leave it be like he had his other questions.

She was wrong.

He waited to pounce until she was busy sautéing vegetables and couldn’t run away. “You know, not even Addison really _learned_ Zombie Tongue. She picked up some stuff, but didn’t learn it completely,” he began, hovering in her bubble yet again. Her silence just egged him on, it seemed. “And some things are easy to understand, to piece together. But that was a pretty complex concept to get in Zombie, you know? They don’t have a Duolingo course on it. Nobody is explaining slang in whatever YouTube videos you watched. So I wonder; how long did you know you were moving here?”

Tyra may have been glaring at him, but she was sweating. What kind of half-truth could be given? He had a point – it wasn’t easy to learn. She’d gotten frustrated at all the sounds that blended together, how many things sounded similar. Of course it would be the one thread that could unravel how excited she had been to move to Seabrook that he would choose to tug on. 

“Dude, just because other people didn’t care to learn your language, doesn’t mean I’m weird for picking it up. You should really be questioning why nobody else is learning it if you ask me,” she grumbled, turning her attention back to the vegetables in the pan as if the tangy sweetness could push his question out of the way. 

It was quiet for a while, and she almost relaxed, thinking he’d been satisfied. Of course he wasn’t. “Ok, ok, that’s a fair point. And you seem to be a smarty pants, you could make intelligent leaps without actually having been taught slang…” Zed paused to lean over the stove and into her field of vision. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re not answering my question.”

The smug look on his face was really getting under her skin. Sure, he was right. He didn’t know what he was right about, but he was in the ballpark. “Why do you care? You could just listen to Bonzo, and drop it, but noooo, you have to get all up in the face of someone with a very hot pan in their hand,” Tyra threatened, lifting the pan off the burner.   
He didn’t seem to believe she would actually touch him with it, because he backed off slowly. “Fine – I’ll drop it if you come to practice today.”

That dickhead. He actually said that in a sing-songy voice. The only reason he had been bothering her was to get her so annoyed that she would cave. And dammit he was right. She tried to hold out, but his grin and wiggling eyebrows were too much and Tyra threw her hands up into the air. “Oh my God! You’re such a broken record! Fine, fine. I’ll go as long as you promise to stop bugging me.”

Zed instantly broke out into a victory dance, feet smoothly sliding across the floor as his fists pumped. When he made his way back to her side, she shook her head at him. “You’re a dork.”

“Thank you, madam. I bear that title proudly,” he said, bowing with a big grin on his face. The biggest dork.

By the time Tyra made her way to the field, the football team was already doing their warmup in full gear. As she walked up the echoing bleacher steps, she could see the cheer squad doing their practice at the far end. A white ponytail snapped around as its owner surveyed the team in front of her. Addison. 

They were in the same chemistry class but sat nowhere near each other. That was fine, she didn’t really want to have anything to do with cheering, or whatever drama had happened between Zed and Addison. If there even was any drama. That part was still unclear to her, but she noticed they didn’t even wave to each other at all. Unlike the giant arm waving at her from the middle of the field that she returned less enthusiastically. 

He was grinning - she just knew it.

Tossing her backpack onto the bench with a bang, she leaned against the railing, still warm from the sun, and noted the different drills they were doing. Any and all comments about their performance were made under her breath. Did they call that accuracy? With hands like that, of course he wasn’t going to catch the ball. Maybe if he ran a little faster, took practice a little more seriously, he could have been where he was supposed to be – that must be Kyle.

Her muttering only got louder when they started using their tackle bags. “Oh my God! You call that a tackle? Where is the effort? The power? Why aren’t your backs straight?” Tyra groaned, hand sliding down her face. Unsurprisingly, it stank of metal. “Who taught you people how to do this? You aren’t even looking where you’re going! I’m surprised some of you aren’t missing altogether – yup, if you don’t hug them tight, of course they’re getting away…” What kind of coach let them get away with that? 

The half-hour of tackles was the longest of her life. It felt as if it dragged on for hours, watching sloppy form and half-assery. When helmets started coming off, she perked up. A short practice would be the best kind she could have stumbled across. Not having to watch more mediocrity would be a blessing – no wonder they’d not come close to being champs since Zed stopped hulking out. However, from the pinnies being passed around, it seemed like they were just having a practice game. No helmets meant no tackling though, bunch of babies. 

Without thinking too much about it, her hands cupped around her mouth. “Hey! I was forced to come here! At least make it entertaining and do shirts versus skins!” she shouted, earning mixed reactions from the team. 

Zed, of course, just laughed and tucked his arms into his jersey. A few seconds later his jersey and shoulder pads came off, followed by his shirt. That was a lot of pale skin in the sun, but more muscle definition than she’d been able to tell through his government-issued clothing. Impressive. 

His arms flew out wide as he strutted around, booming back, “Are you not entertained?” He even threw a wink her way before grabbing his stuff off the field and placing it on the edge as she wolf-whistled at him, earning more laughter.

The rest of the Shrimp were not as excited, but they complied as they all took off their shoulder pads. Some pulled their jerseys back on, the other half pulled their shirts off and Tyra gave a few more whoops and whistles to boost their confidence. They didn’t seem to appreciate it nearly as much as she felt they should have but squared off at the line nonetheless. All her noise had attracted the cheer squad’s attention, as the movement in the corner of her eye had stilled. 

After the first few plays, she was back to being disappointed, and the squad had gone back to their practice. Not that the guys weren’t entertaining to watch – half of them had given up on taking it seriously and were goofing around, flexing awkwardly as they ran. “Even without the bulk in the way, you can’t get to where you need to be. Even without the worry of being tackled,” Tyra mumbled, shaking her head as she leaned against the railing. 

When their coach called the huddle to end the practice, Tyra stretched before pulling her backpack over her shoulder. Even if she’d grimaced most of the way through practice, she hadn’t sat down at all; she’d wanted to catch even the slightest improvement, the smallest grain of someone other than Zed taking it seriously. There had been a few, but their attention had waned throughout the practice. Two hours was apparently too long to hold attention spans. As the huddle broke, the giant made a beeline for the stands with his gear in hand and she took her time picking her way down the steps, fighting the smile at his puppy dog face.

“Well? What did you think?” he asked, grin not entirely cocky. 

Up close it was a little harder not to stare at the shirtless body in front of her. His muscles existed, were defined, but not hard. The pecs at her eye level didn’t make her totally drool –he was no Captain America – but he was distracting. Damn him and his dedication. Though Tyra was fairly certain he meant his team, and not what she thought of him.   
“Well,” she shrugged, a half-smile on her face. “Y’all could really use some better D.”

Zed’s jaw visibly clenched and she could see his eyes light up with mischief in the beat before he opened his mouth. “Personally, I prefer to be the one supplying the D.”

His delivery was solid; he didn’t crack a grin until she shoved his solid shoulder and rolled her eyes. Her own mouth was pulled into a smirk as he laughed. “You know what I mean. Your defense could really step up its game.”

“Yeah, well, shaking off the summer rust is taking a bit longer than I’d like. Obviously. But we’ll get there,” Zed said, so full of determination she had to smile. “But now that practice is over, would you wanna grab some ice cream?”

Ice cream? A terrible snack after a workout; if he’d said to grab a smoothie, it would have made more sense. “Dude, I don’t know if you noticed, but you’re sweaty, and I’m not going to stick around while you have a shower. I have a lab I need to finish writing up,” Tyra explained, wrinkling her nose at him.

Zed’s bottom lip quivered in an overly dramatic pout. “Are you saying I stink? That you’d rather do your homework than hang out?” he asked, doing his best to mimic a begging puppy. Or at least, that’s all she saw when she looked at him.

Rolling her eyes, Tyra pointed towards the field where a few cheerleaders had drifted to speak to some of the players. One petite girl in particular kept looking their way, and found herself on the receiving end of Tyra’s point. “Why not ask her for ice cream? She looks pretty eager to get a minute with you,” she teased, smirk back on her face. 

He didn’t even turn around to see who she was pointing at, just looked at her with that twinkle in his eye. “But she isn’t the mysterious Tyra Molina, is she?”

“Go shower already, you big dork. Because yes – you stink!” Tyra wasn’t going to let him have a chance to elaborate on what he thought was mysterious about her. He already had a habit of pulling on threads she didn’t want anyone even noticing, let alone touching. 

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” Zed laughed as he walked off towards the school. The hand holding his helmet flew up in the air as he yelled back at her. “You owe me an ice cream!”

“I don’t think that’s how that works!” she yelled back, laughing silently as she eyed the defined lines on his back. She was only human; she couldn’t help it. 

Taking a second to fish her keys out of her backpack, she hadn’t noticed the football coach making his way over to her. At first, she thought she was going to be in trouble for causing a racket during practice, but that was far from what he wanted to talk about. One interesting conversation full of bonus credit later, and Tyra was looking forward to the sweet shock she would deliver the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Zombies 2 Day everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying so far!


	4. Chapter 4

The look on Zed’s face at lunch when she told him she would be at every practice for the rest of the season was priceless. It was like his face turned into a spotlight; his smile was way too bright. “Are you serious? You’re not just saying that?”

Even though he was expressing doubt, his smile didn’t dim one watt. It would make the reveal that much sweeter. She could practically taste it. “Of course I’m serious. Have I ever lied to you?” Not that he was aware of, anyway. “Though you might get sick of me pretty soon…”

The brightness flickered as his brow creased, but it snapped back quickly. “I dunno, I spend like, almost four hours a day with you already. And I’m still trying to bump that up.”  
“Well, now you get your chance.”

The smug look stayed on her face all through Cooking, and while it faded in her Math class, it was right back up when she approached the field. Tyra lurked off to the side, hidden in the shadows of the bleachers. It didn’t obstruct her view of the congregated football team, or the guy a head taller than most of his teammates craning his neck to look at the bleachers, then any space the bleachers didn’t block. Looking at where she had been the day before and frowning when he couldn’t find her. Oh yes, it would be sweet.

As the coach called them to order, she leaned against one of the cross-supports. The fact that Zed was still looking around was almost too much. Like a lost puppy. Cute. That would vanish soon enough as their coach started speaking. Suppressing what would no doubt have come out as a cackle took a lot more effort than Tyra had expected.

“So, we all know since our captain was a freshman – bless him for making it so I could keep my job – we haven’t had anywhere close to a clean sweep. Even our pre-season games this year; every game is a struggle. The ones we win…they’re too close for comfort. And the ones we lose, well. My ex-wife has finally agreed to go on a date with me, so we need to at least close the gap on our losses,” he pleaded, hands clasped together. “So to help us out, we are getting a student coach!”

Murmurs rippled through the group as they turned to each other. It didn’t faze their coach, who just started speaking louder. “They were the only sophomore to become captain, and their team had clean sweeps the entire three years they were on the team. Their coach called them a bit of a demon, but they got the job done!”

“Why doesn’t this guy just join the team?” someone called out from the middle of the group. A bunch of heads nodded in agreement. “If he’s so great, why is he just helping coach?”

Tyra couldn’t have asked for a better cue if she tried. 

Smirk plastered on her face, she walked out from her spot into the sun, arms crossed over her chest. “First of all, I lack the equipment to play on a guys’ team. But also, football is for people who don’t like their brains – or use them.”

The murmurs dropped to whispers, but her smirk was fixed on Zed. He looked as if someone had stuck his finger in an electrical socket. Before he remembered how his mouth worked, a bunch of his teammates hurled questions at her. 

“You’re that rugby girl, aren’t you?”

“Do you even know anything about football?”

“What do you know about coaching?”

A relaxed smile spread to her lips as she made her way to the bench and hopped up so that almost everyone would need to look up at her. Zed excluded, the stupid giant. “Calling me a student coach might be a step too far. Student trainer is closer to what I’m actually going to be doing. I may not know play football, but there are similarities between it and rugby. Your tackling game is sad, guys. From now on, if you miss your tackles completely – which quite a few of you were doing - you’re getting a half-hour of drills. Weak attempts take a lap. And if you’re half-assing practice in general, you get both,” she fired out, already seeing disgruntled faces. That was good. 

Taking a deep breath, Tyra let out a sigh and crossed her arms once more. “Look, you and I both know I don’t know a lot about football. I did some basic homework, and I’m going to watch tapes of games to get a better understanding.” More murmuring from the team, which set her mouth in a firm line. “What I _do_ know, is rugby. And I did everything you guys do without any padding, without a helmet, without stopping every time the ball was dropped. So let’s get this started.”

From what she had seen the day before, their practices only had a loose structure. That was changing, and the groans let her know exactly how they felt about it. It was even worse when she told them that they wouldn’t be doing their half-hour of tackling practice, but that the day would be spent building stamina and doing footwork drills. “There’s no point in improving your tackles if you can’t even be where you need to be. If nobody can get there in time, it doesn’t matter if you can clear the way.”

Nobody was a fan of what she had in store for them. They were doing suicides in full gear, then five laps of the field - more if nobody had died yet. Then a short break for water and to let their muscles recover before doing ladder drills and running the stairs. Fifty proper squats done together as a team, and if someone fell on their butt, everyone would be starting over. Depending on how they were doing, and how long it took, they’d get further instruction. Everyone started complaining at once, but she calmly pulled her phone out of her waistband and held her thumb on the screen. An air horn sounded, and it was pressed again whenever someone started speaking.

Tyra didn’t start up again until they were all steaming in silence. “Look. I’m here to improve what I can – ball handling, footwork, and tackling. I know that shit. I also know that suicides suck. Doing any training that isn’t what you want to be doing sucks major dick – but this works,” she explained calmly. Even she was never a fan of the practices she ran. But nobody could argue with the results. “I know you’ve already done your warm-up, now get to stretching – I only saw like, three of you stretch yesterday, and nobody is pulling anything on my watch.”

It took a minute, and she had to shoo them, but they spread out to start stretching. Hopping off the bench, Tyra started doing her own stretches, fingers interlacing and pressing up to the sky as far as they could. Her satisfied grin as Zed approached was met with a shake of his head – and a smile of his own. “Told you I’d be at every practice, didn’t I?”  
He laughed and his smile widened into a grin, though nowhere near as smug as the one she knew was on her face. “Clean sweeps, huh? You didn’t tell me that. Or that you were captain,” he said, shaking his head at her.

Tyra smiled before bending and pressing her palms to the grass with a long exhale. “Hey man, you’re the one who called me mysterious. Just because I didn’t run around bragging about it, doesn’t mean I’m not proud of what we did.” Looking up at him past her arm, she caught the subtle turn of his head back to paying attention. Were the cheerleaders out again? She thought she’d passed them in the gym when she was getting changed. “I like to win. So, we are going to win.”

Straightening back up, her hands went to her hips and she squinted at him. “Now get to stretching. I’m not going easy on you because we’re friends.”

Zed clutched his hand to his heart and stumbled back a few steps. “Ouch! Like I would expect any kind of special treatment for being friends…” he sulked, keeping his hurt expression just long enough that when the cheek crept in it wasn’t irritating. “How about for being devilishly charming?”

He wasn’t wrong about being charming, but it wouldn’t get him any special treatment. “Keep talking and your ass is getting double laps,” she chided, poking him in the chest.   
Hands up defensively, Zed laughed as he backed away. “Yes ma’am.”

Once everyone had finished their stretches – which they had to keep getting yelled at to stop chatting and actually stretch – she lined them up along the goal line. And lined up right beside them. The murmuring started again, and she sighed, standing up from her crouch. “Yeah, wow, what a surprise, I’m joining you for practice. I never make anyone do anything that I wouldn’t do. If there were shoulder pads that fit, I’d be wearing them too,” Tyra explained, having already spent thirty minutes in the locker room the day before trying to get any of them to fit right.

“Yeah right,” someone called out. Probably Kyle. “If they make them to fit the captain, they should have some to fit you.”

Her eyes widened in mock surprise as she twisted to look at Zed, who was busy looking up at the sky and shaking his head. “Whoa, Zed. You grew boobs when I wasn’t looking? You have the specially made shoulder pads? Wow, I’m impressed,” she gushed before throwing cut eye in the direction the stupidity had come from. 

Back in her crouch, Tyra noticed only a few other people were also close to the ground. Her team had always started suicides like that, but she guessed there was nothing wrong with them standing. “And…go!”

After every full set, they took a minute break to let their muscles recover before going again. They did as many sets as they could in thirty minutes, which wasn’t as many as she would have liked. She noticed not everyone was putting their all into it. The first drill. An adjustment period was needed, and Tyra decided she wouldn’t be doling out any punishments. Not on the first day, at least. 

Next came the laps, and while she knew she had started at a faster pace, she was a little confused as to why nobody else was around her. Not even Zed, with his stupidly long legs. Looking over her shoulder, she noticed that other than the captain, only a few players weren’t huddled together. Tyra dropped back to run beside Zed, irritated by how easy his long gait was. “Is there a reason everyone is so far behind? Am I pushing too hard to start or something?” she asked, only looking up at him when he didn’t answer right away.

His lips were pressed in a thin line, and he was squinting into the distance. “I’m going to say this as well as I can without insulting my team too much. They are a little…distracted?”

“By what?” Tyra’s face screwed up in confusion. The cheer team wasn’t even on the field – she had specifically requested to have them somewhere else while the team adjusted to the new practice. They didn’t need to feel embarrassed at not being able to keep up as their bodies adjusted to a proper practice.

Another pause. “To be clear, this is on them, not on you, but those shorts are real tight. That’s why they’re running farther back,” he said, immediately pinching his lips together again.

She glanced down, looking at the bike shorts she was wearing. Of course they were tight – they were bike shorts! Great for all the running around they were doing. Taking as deep a breath as her speed would allow, her hands clasped in front of her. “So you’re telling me they’re hanging back, not because they’re tired, but because they’re staring at me?” Zed gave a curt nod. “Un-fucking-believable…”

With a couple of quick steps, Tyra started running backward, glaring at the group of guys behind her. “Tell your hormones good job – slacking for zero reason has earned you all an extra five laps that I won’t be participating in. I can’t possibly stare at my own ass while running, so I’m exempt from this punishment,” she shouted, resisting the urge to flip them all off. She was a coach, after all.

Turning her back on their complaints, she shook her head before glancing up at Zed. He was still barely pushing himself as they started their third lap. “Is there a reason you’re so relaxed in this run?”

“I’ve still got seven more laps to go – pacing is about making sure you can finish strong.”

“This isn’t favouritism, but you don’t have to do the extra laps – I know you weren’t being slow to stare,” Tyra offered with a shrug of her shoulders. She wasn’t sure about the other guys who weren’t part of the pack, or she’d tell them that too.

“I’m not entirely innocent. I’ll take my laps,” he said simply, a small smile on his face. “I overheard them, but I already knew what they were looking at.”

She could practically hear the _click_ of a piece falling into place. 

_That_ was what he’d been doing while she was stretching. At least that made more sense than watching her run. “They’re getting in trouble for slacking, not for staring. But props for standing with your team,” Tyra explained matter-of-factly. After a minute of silence, a thought struck her. “They know I wear shorts every day at school, right? They’ve seen me in the hall or class. Why stare now?”

Zed laughed and looked down at her, brow raised, before turning his attention back to where they were running. “You know these are easily like, ten times tighter than the shorts you normally wear, right? Kind of like they’re vacuum-sealed to you. Knowing your butt existed, and seeing it on display are two very different things.” 

“This is just what rugby does. You don’t even know how many squats are needed to get your legs powerful enough to try and run through like seven people tackling you at the same time, or pushing through a scrum. Rugby is known for being the sport with the best asses for a reason.” It wasn’t a brag; just a statement. Tyra was proud of the power in her legs, and she wasn’t mad about how it made her ass look. 

He just shook his head and smiled. Ok, it was a little bit of a brag. 

They ran together for her next few laps in comfortable silence, and as soon as she jogged off to get her water, Tyra saw him lengthen his stride and pull even farther ahead of the rest of the team. “Showoff,” she muttered, draining half her bottle in one long gulp. Had he only set a pace he thought she would be able to keep?

That was annoying. Kind of nice – but mostly annoying. Who was he to know what her max speed for distance running was?

After their short rest, as some of them were winded from all the running, Tyra broke them up into smaller groups so they could have a little more rest. There were only two ladders for them to use anyway. Everyone had to run through five drills, doing ten runs each set. Some had high knees, others had a lot of shuffling feet, and all of them were to improve agility. A few people tried to sneak into another group, pretending they’d already finished and were given five more laps for their trouble. 

So much for no punishment on the first day.

By the time they’d run the stairs and done their fifty squats – which had taken a bit longer but they hadn’t had to start over – she was getting tired and her shirt was clinging to her. Why was it still so sunny? Where were the clouds? It was barely even September, but that sun beating down felt like mid-summer heat.

However, she still had more energy than everyone else. Many of the boys were sitting on the grass, panting and drenched in sweat. Zed was flat on his back, just barely breathing evenly. Tyra clapped her hands together to get everyone’s attention, which took some effort on their part to turn and look at her, but she chalked it up to exhaustion. 

“Great job, you can all still move. Now, our offensive players, Coach has some ball handling drills for you. Defensive players, we’ll be doing zig-zag cuts,” she announced, once again met with a bunch of grumbling. Zed just lifted a thumbs up high in the air.

Everyone looked completely beat at the end of practice, but Tyra stopped them before they left the field. “I know you’re all tired – I’m tired – and nobody wants to hear this, but I just wanted to bring up workout routines.” She paused for the complaining she was growing used to, but it didn’t come. They must have _seriously_ been exhausted. “I don’t know what kind of routines you guys have now, and I’m not going to tell you specific exercises to do. However, if you’re not in the gym lifting at least three days a week, we’ll have a problem. If it’s not a habit, I’ll notice. If you guys are skipping leg day, that’s a big no-no. That’s where the power comes from. If my legs are thicker than yours are, that is a problem.”

Zed had drifted to the front, so it wasn’t hard for her to point at him. “Look at your captain. Go on, look.” Tyra waited until everyone at least seemed to have their heads turned towards him. “You know what risks this guy took to play football in the first place. So you also know how hard he has worked – and is still working – to keep playing. To be able to give one hundred perce-“

“A hundred and ten percent. I want to go beyond my own limits.”

The stern expression she had turned on him instantly faded when she saw his face. She’d thought Zed was joking, being his usual goofy self. However determination was written all over his face. Tyra nodded firmly; she could work with that. “One hundred and ten percent. If you’re not here to win – if you don’t want to break shit or cry bitter tears when you lose – you won’t make it to the top. But come to practice and give as much as your captain does, and you’ll get there.”

Looking at the sea of faces around her, Tyra noted more determined faces than exhausted ones. That was already a win. “Go Shrimp on three. One, two-“

“GO SHRIMP!”

That was the first time she’d heard them sound like a proper team. “Alright, hit the showers, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

As they walked off the field, Coach grabbed her shoulders and shook her. Even though she tried to control her face, she felt her eyes widening like a couple of traitors. “That was great! I mean, you could tone down the swearing and the yelling, maybe, but other than that – great! The threat of more work made them work harder – who knew?” he cried, only letting go when he noticed Zed hanging back. “Zed! Isn’t she great?”

His face split into a huge grin. “The greatest.”

“Ok, ok. I’m going to go home and press my slacks. Got a date tonight with the ex-wife and man am I feeling good!” Coach crowed, marching off the field with great purpose.  
Tyra stared after him for a minute. “Is he…always oversharing?”

“Yes, yes he is.” His grin morphed into a smirk as he looked at her. “No special treatment for friends, huh?”

“What are you talking about? You did the laps with the team.”

Zed clasped his hands together under his chin and dreamily looked into the middle distance. “Look at him, he works so hard! He tries his best! And look at those legs! That ass!” he gushed, fluttering his eyelashes excessively.

He earned a snort. “You _do_ do your best, and working hard is a good example,” she said before crossing her arms. “I don’t remember saying anything about your legs or ass though.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Zed teased as they started walking back to the school. “I heard ‘look at him, he doesn’t skip leg day.’ Which clearly means I look good.”

Tyra whacked her bottle against his shoulder pads and rolled her eyes. Just because she hadn’t said those words specifically, didn’t mean he was wrong. “You hear what you want, buddy.” 

“Great. Does that mean I’ll hear a yes when I ask if you want to hang out after we get presentable?” he asked, shooting her another puppy smile.

Before she answered, she pulled her phone out of her waistband. Even through the little pocket, the screen was still streaked with sweat. Gross. No missed calls though. No new messages. No hanging with the giant. “No, sorry. Homework.”


	5. Chapter 5

Most people are happy when Friday rolls around; the weekend and plans with friends are just around the corner. Tyra, however, was exceptionally pumped. Barely paying attention in English, she was busy looking over the notes she’d made the night before. Packing them away once class was finished, she took extra care to ensure the papers wouldn’t get too crinkled as she slid them into her backpack between notebooks. 

“Are you ok?” Zed asked, hand reaching out to press his large palm against her forehead. 

“What do you mean? Is my face red? I don’t feel like I’m getting sick…do I sound weird?” Being ill was the last thing she wanted. Tyra leaned into his hand, wanting to make sure she was fine. She had too many things to plan. Too many things to do.

The concerned frown on his face deepened. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but something must really be wrong…” Tyra felt her eyes widening, the way her brow shifted beneath his hand in the pause that stretched on for way too long. “You’ve been smiling all morning.”

His own smile cracked through as she swatted his hand away. “Don’t be an idiot. I smile.”

“Uh-huh. As someone who sees your face every day, can confirm. You’re the smiliest person I know.”

His smug attitude earned him a quick punch in the arm as they walked towards the door. “Shut up. I’m just…I dunno. It’s cool to be able to,” Tyra paused again, face scrunching up as she tried to pinpoint why she felt the way she was feeling. “Feel useful?” That seemed right. “Since I can’t do my own thing, with my own team, my own sport, helping the football team is like, cool.”

That was lame, and she knew it. A long blink and inhale later, she attempted to clarify as they merged into the hallway traffic. “I really like the team environment, you know? Like, friends are great, and while I’m not actually a member of the team, feeling involved is just on another level. I love watching people improve, being a part of that. I know my yelling and extra laps maybe don’t showcase that, but I do. If that, I dunno, makes any sense?” Tyra rambled, looking up at him to see if any of what she’d said had been intelligible.

Something about the way his face quickly flashed a smile when his attention snapped back to her felt off. Almost like it was forced, which was weird. His smiles always came so organically – if not too often for her liking – that it set her on edge. The halls weren’t even that crowded to be too distracting. Tyra was about to aggressively defend her admission when he nodded. 

“I get that. You’re talking to the guy who wanted to feel included so badly that he nearly fucked up an entire community back to the times of pitchforks and angry mobs, so…I feel you.”

That hadn’t entirely been what she had meant, but she realized they were already in the science hall. Already in the habit, her feet had just taken her there while they were talking. Tyra didn’t remember which class he had next, but knew it wasn’t anywhere near hers. Squinting up at him, she hooked her thumbs in her backpack straps. “Did you change your schedule around?” she asked, brow arched.

He met her gaze with a look of confusion. “No? What are you talking about?”

“Well, you don’t normally walk this way. Like, we’re almost at my Bio class…” Tyra paused to dramatically step in front of a classroom door. “Now we’re there.”

“You were talking, and about something important to you. I didn’t want to interrupt you just because my class is down a different hallway,” he smiled genuinely, though his eyes were roving around the hall. 

It was a little weird – he usually kept eye contact to the point of making her a little uncomfortable – but she realized he might just be checking for a certain white-haired girl to round the corner. Their relationship was still unclear to her. Everyone said they were fine, but not once had she seen them even give a nod in recognition. “Uh, thanks? Now hurry up or you’ll be late and I’ll feel bad for rambling on.” They already needed to shift out of the way of her classmates, seeing as they were effectively blocking the doorway.

Shooing him away with a few quick flicks of her hands, Tyra heard him laughing as she turned on her heel to walk into the classroom. It was a lot harder to pull her notes out in Biology, so she just doodled her passing drills in the margins of her notebook. Her eyes narrowed when she left class at the bell and there the pale giant was, waiting with a smile. He stayed by her side on the way to her locker and sat beside her at lunch. Weird.

Attempting to shrug off the weirdness, she beamed at their table. “You have to come watch practice today-“

Eliza and Bonzo both cried out in mock pain at the same time. “Hey! You need to warn people before you flash a smile that bright! You could have blinded us,” Bonzo teased with a grin as he shielded his eyes. He parted his fingers to wink at her, though.

She subtly elbowed Zed for his snickering as her smile dropped. “I smile! Everyone needs to stop being so dramatic…”

“Oh, we didn’t say you don’t smile. We’re just not used to the sun where your face should be,” Eliza fired back, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. 

“Whatever…” Tyra scowled, stuffing her sandwich in her mouth. When she smiled again, she kept her lips closed. They could keep their stupid jokes to themselves. “So, I don’t know if you guys saw any practices last week, but the improvement so far is pretty impressive. Not to brag, but I’m proud of what we’ve done together, as a team.”

“Yeah, everyone is actually doing what they’re told to do,” Zed agreed, grabbing a slice of mango from her container. “That in itself is impressive to me.”

It was her turn to smirk, and Tyra nudged the container a bit closer as her eyes roved around the room to find the scattered players. “They got tired of doing extra laps pretty quickly.”

“Yeah, especially when you started making them do lunges instead of running.”

“Ha! Ok, I’m for sure coming. Just to watch some of those boneheads get in trouble,” Eliza cackled, deviously rubbing her hands together. Bonzo shook his head at her but agreed to come too, if only to stop Eliza from throwing tomatoes at them. 

Once they were done eating, the girls went over their Math homework together. There were only a few problems Tyra had had difficulty with, but it was impossible to work things out over text. Too many numbers moved around, and she needed every step laid out to truly understand what she was supposed to be doing. When she grabbed her stuff to rush to her locker, Tyra huffed at the new shadow she had acquired.

“I’m a big girl, you know. I can walk places on my own,” Tyra grumbled as she rifled through her locker more aggressively than necessary.

Zed barely acknowledged her annoyance as he leaned against her locker door; hand on the top to keep it from closing on her. He was looking down the hallway, and only turned his attention back to her when she started to squint at him. “I am well aware that you’re a strong, independent woman who don’t need no man,” he teased, a smirk briefly flashing across his face. 

Stretching his arms up until they cracked, he grinned at her. “Since you are apparently too busy to hang out with me – ever,” Zed said pointedly, letting the word hang between them before continuing. “I decided to take this time instead. Is that a crime?”

The debate on whether or not being annoying was a crime continued until they sat in Cooking, their teacher’s antics easily distracted them. There was some debate over how much cheese to put on their pizza, but Tyra won out when she snatched the container from him and poured most of it on top before he wrestled it away from her. Only after it came out of the oven did he admit he’d been wrong.

Having successfully been walked to her Math class, Tyra cut in front of him, and his shoes squeaked in his effort not to collide with her. “As great as this extra Zed time is and everything, if you’re here after class you’re getting ten extra laps.”

Zed winced, shoulders creeping up towards his ears. “Ouch. Double the normal punishment? Ok, I get it,” he sighed, palms out defensively as he began to back away. “You’ll see me at practice, and anything before that I can promise will be completely accidental.” With a quick wave, he was off to whatever class he was _supposed_ to be in.

Throughout her own class, Tyra tried to figure out what the heck was going on with him. Since he’d been saying she was smiling more, she should have pointed out how he seemed jumpy all day. “Someone dropped a pan and I thought he was going to hurl a knife in their direction. Like, I find him weird in general, but today he is just so weird!” she complained, though all she received was a shrug.

“I’ve known Zed my whole life. I don’t know what is going on with him either, but if it was something serious, he’d say something. He’s good like that,” Eliza explained, adjusting her grip around the back of her chair. Instead of using her desk to write on, her feet were on her seat and her legs were propping up her binder. 

Shooting her a pointed look with her eyebrows dramatically raised, Tyra couldn’t have kept the sarcasm out of her voice if she’d tried. Not that she did. “Right. So he told you guys about how his z-band was messing with his body? That’s why you stopped him from using it before it caused permanent damage.”

Everyone packing their books up cut Eliza’s quip short, whatever it would have been. Tyra knew from the withering glare that she had gone a little far and made her escape with a sheepish smile as soon as the bell rang. 

Tyra took a bit of time before leaving the locker room to look over her notes. She’d watched hours of practice, read up on what drills worked best for different positions, and ranked where she thought everyone was at. It was a simple scale of one to five. One was seriously lacking, and five was above expectations. Not a lot of fives, but not many ones either – though there were some twos that she wanted to improve on. 

It was only something she was able to take the time to do because she was the only one there. Not even a single cheerleader was ever present in the change room, and it was always so weird. Even if they wore their uniforms all day, didn’t they want to shower and change after practice? With all the clapping and yelling coming from the gym the last few days, they had to work up a sweat.

By the time she made her way to the field, the team was running through their warm-up, and her friends were sitting in the bleachers. Eliza made a point to ignore her when she came out, but Bonzo gave her double thumbs up and a big grin. Feeling the most prepared for practice since she’d started, Tyra joined in the warm-up with an extra bounce to her step. 

That energy quickly ebbed away when she called out the practice for the day and only a handful of people moved. She looked to Zed, expecting to see her own shock mirrored in his face, but he was just disappointedly shaking his head. “What are you doing? Get moving.”

It wasn’t a request, and definitely more forceful than how she normally asked them. Still they stayed silent, feet planted. Those that had initially moved stood closer to their captain. What a day to have an audience. Or at least, a bigger audience than normal; the cheer team was back to having their practice on the far side of the field. Not that Tyra was embarrassed; she felt more like kicking the asses of everyone not ready to practice.

“If you don’t start stretching-“

“We’re not taking orders from someone who knows nothing about football.” Kyle. Of course. The one thing he was consistent at was being a giant pain in her ass. “These drills aren’t going to help anybody do anything, and we’re tired. We’re sore. We don’t even have a reason to listen to you – you’re not actually our coach.”

At least now Zed was reflecting her feelings. His eyes rolled so far back into his head all she could see were the whites of his eyes. She felt like doing the exact same thing, but the small amount of restraint she had kept them from roaming. He started to move to the front, jaw set, but Tyra subtly shook her head. They didn’t need a reason to get pissed off at him too. A quick glance at Coach saw him retreating as if he weren’t involved in any part of what was going on – supporting neither party. Of course.

“I mean. I can think of a few reasons, Kyle. Reason one would be because your actual coach told you to. Remember the whole student coach thing? But if that’s not enough for you, let’s look at some other points.” Tyra’s words were laced with venom, and the tight smile on her face kept threatening to turn into a snarl, but she pushed through by running her mouth instead as she crossed her arms. “Tired? Sore? That’s because you weren’t where you should have been going into the season. A little tired, a little sore, sure. That’s what happens when you work hard. Push yourself. You don’t see me bitching about it though.”

Her arm stretched out towards the players around Zed; the ones who weren’t part of the mutiny. “They aren’t either. Because they were in better form. And you don’t think what we’re doing is helping? Ask Zed – ask Eliza and Bonzo even! I’ve literally been talking about how everyone here is improving all day!”

“We don’t even know if you’re good at what you say you’re good at,” Kyle went on, completely ignoring everything she’d just said. “You could be full of shit and just wanting your college applications to look good.”

“Oh my God, Kyle. Are you kidding me?” Somehow her words came out of Zed’s mouth, except his exasperation seemed to be leading him down the path to murder. Or at the very least, that was the look he was shooting Kyle’s way. Tyra had to clench her jaw not to laugh.

“She hasn’t had us tackle all week. She’s just scared!”

Tyra couldn’t help the burst of laughter that time, though she cleared her throat in an attempt to recover. “You think I know nothing about…ok,” she sighed, doing some quick stretches as she walked past the throng of players to the open field. “Fine. How about this – if more than one of you can tackle me to the ground, we will do some tackling drills today. Sound fair?” The team murmured amongst themselves while she rolled her shoulders, though Zed just stared at her, exasperated. 

Kyle, who somehow had been made their spokesperson, stepped forward. “If anyone can tackle you, we’ll do tackling drills from now on?”

“That’s not what I said,” Tyra sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger. “I said if _more than one_ of you can tackle me _to the ground_ , we will do some today. Maybe we will do some every day, but for now it’s only today. Not that I think I’ll be needing to adjust my plan for practice…”

That struck a chord with the team, and even the ones who had stood with Zed were drifting towards the rest of the group. Good. The more irritated they were, the easier it would be. 

“You don’t have any pads, Tyra,” Zed frowned, though he made sure he was loud enough that everyone could hear him. “Or a helmet. You’re not getting tackled by guys in full gear.”

“I’ve taken worse without wearing any padding,” Tyra scoffed, hands flying to her hips. Then she sighed and squinted up into the bright sky. “But you do have a point. If you, as an individual, really think you’ll take me down to the ground, no helmets or shoulder pads, please. I really don’t feel like breaking my nose today.”

All of the guys quickly started getting out of their gear, taking a minute to realize it was faster to help each other out of their pads than struggle individually. Tyra watched as she finished stretching with a slight smile. Zed was still frowning at her, but she shrugged a shoulder and he reluctantly took off his pads. 

“Ok, great. Now, do you want like, a tackle dummy? Or should I be running with the ball?” she asked, one hand resting on a cocked hip. 

The eager energy in the air faltered for a minute as they deliberated amongst themselves, but they settled on her running. “It would feel too much like we were just picking on you if you weren’t moving,” Christian, a junior, called out. He’d been one of the ones to stand with Zed at the start of practice. “If you just stood there, it would be too mean. And some could say it would be too easy.”

“Ok, cool. Ball!” Tyra called, easily snatching it from the air when it was tossed to her. She tucked it under her arm, keeping it snug to her body. A little smaller than what she was used to, but it would do. “Alright, one at a time so you don’t kill each other, ok?”

Jogging into the field a bit farther, she waited until Coach blew his whistle; suddenly he decided to participate. At first, Tyra thought maybe she was running too fast, but that wouldn’t make any sense. She couldn’t even hear any footfalls behind her, only her own as she raced towards the goalpost. A glance over her shoulder showed a lot of shuffling around, but eventually, she heard someone behind her. All that talk, yet they took forever to decide who would go first. 

One more glance over her shoulder – Kyle. Of course. His head was already lowered for the tackle, and she sighed before sidestepping to the right. As she did, Tyra shoved his head. Having been ready to hit her around her middle, his momentum caused him to stumble and fall. Slowing to a jog, she circled back to offer him a hand. He looked like an angry tomato and ignored her completely. She had to pinch her lips between her teeth to keep from chuckling.

“Next,” she called, a bright smile on her face. No trace of smugness – she was genuinely having fun.

The rest of the team didn’t do much better than Kyle. Many of them had their heads down and weren’t able to adjust to her sidestepping them. The ones who were able to get a piece of her, she was ready and just dragged them until they let go. Their timing had been off, or perhaps they’d been trying not to hurt her and hadn’t used their full weight to take her to the ground. Others just had completely bad timing, and she was able to jump over their reach. 

Clustered together, there were a lot of crossed arms and drawn brows. Tyra could practically taste the frustration coming off of them. Quite a few had attempted tackling more than once and they were the ones that looked the most determined. “Come on you guys!” she said, hopping from one foot to the other. “Learn from your mistakes. Learn from other people’s mistakes!”

Turning back towards the goalpost, she started running. Once practice properly started, she was not joining any suicide drills, that was for sure. Hooting and hollering caught her attention and she slowed to see what the noise was about. They were making a fuss over their captain, the only one who hadn’t tried to tackle her yet. He was doing some quick stretches at the front of the pack before tapping the toes of his cleats against the ground. Suddenly she didn’t feel as tired anymore, and a big grin spread across her face as she sped back up. A challenge.

“Yeah buddy! I’ll never let you live it down if the giant zombie couldn’t take me to the ground!” she crowed, quickly checking over her shoulder. Tyra turned just in time to see a blur headed right for her from the side. “Oh shi-“

In that split second before they hit the ground, all Tyra could think was that it didn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would have. He must have pulled back as he hit her. The punk. Still, it knocked the wind out of her, and she gasped for air for a few breaths. Zed’s forehead was just resting on the uniboob created by her sports bra as the rest of his weight pinned her lower body down. If she wasn’t struggling to breathe with a two hundred plus pound man on top of her, they could have looked like any couple lying in the grass.

The cheering for his successful tackle petered out the longer neither of them moved, and suddenly Zed sprang up to his hands and knees over her. His brows were knit together as he shuffled up to look down at her face, eyes wide as they could get. “Sorry, sorry. Shit, are you ok?”

Tyra nodded, holding up a finger between them. “That…was a g…good tackle, Oh Captain, my Captain,” she got out, lungs still trying to remember how to function normally. “I figured you’d be the…one to actually take me down.”

He laughed and shook his head, grinning down at her. “That’s why it was more than one, huh?”

She grinned right back. “Yup.”

That spark of mischief in his eye that was growing familiar showed up as the corners of his smile tightened. “Well, how did you like my D?”

The fact that he could ask that without instantly laughing was impressive, though the longer he looked at her, the harder it seemed to be to keep it in. If he was playing at being serious, she’d give a serious answer. Wouldn’t even roll her eyes. “You pulled back,” Tyra stated simply, tilting her head to the side a fraction.

His grin fell from his face as his gaze shifted to the grass beside her head. “I didn’t want to hurt you…”

The softness in his voice caught her off guard, but this was going to be a teachable moment. “Aw, that’s sweet,” she murmured, reaching up to cup his cheek. Zed’s eyes widened as she took a beat to look up at him, a soft smile on her face. The smile disappeared as she flatly said, “But don’t half-ass practice.”

Taking advantage of his confusion, Tyra wrapped her legs around his hips and knocked his arm out from under him. Before he could accidentally headbutt her, she rolled them and settled atop his hips. Zed’s body was taught beneath her, his eyes wide as he just lay there, unmoving. Confusion was written all over his face and she just smirked. “You’re lucky you’re not getting extra laps for holding back.”

This time when she offered her hand, it was taken.


	6. Chapter 6

As they started walking back to the rest of the team, Zed was a few steps behind. He’d volunteered to grab the ball, since she’d only ditched it when trying to breathe – like a tackle could have separated her death grip. Tyra wasn’t sure if it was the wind, or if her heart was still pounding a bit from the panic of not being able to breathe properly, but she couldn’t quite hear what he’d said. She’d definitely heard the word ‘you.’ “What did you say?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at him. 

He lengthened his stride and grinned, easily catching up and falling into step beside her. His arm was thrown loosely around her shoulders and gave her a bit of a squeeze as he said, “I said, you’re such a weirdo.”

Tyra rolled her eyes and her head along with them, though his arm blocked her from looking too dramatic. Instead of lolling back completely, she only succeeded at rolling her head along his arm. “Thanks,” she replied dryly, giving his arm a pat before shrugging it off.

Approaching the team, she clapped her hands together, a smile slowly tugging the corners of her lips higher. “There; one successful tackle. Can anyone guess why Zed was able to tackle me?” she asked, brows rising.

“Because he’s huge?!” Zeke called out, and laughter rippled through the group. Tyra knew he was only a bit taller than her, and a bit on the slim side, but she couldn’t help laughing along too. 

“No, no. I’m pretty sure I know how he did it, but why don’t you enlighten us, Captain?” Her brow raised a tick as she looked at Zed, the small smile on her face threatening to turn into a smirk.

He shifted a little, shrugging one shoulder, and then the other before actually answering. “I just, you know, watched you?” He groaned as the team snickered. “Not like that! How you ran, how you reacted to the tackles. You always checked over your left shoulder first, so I came from the right.”

While Tyra nodded sagely, she played her runs over in her head. Yikes. Zed was right. How nobody had ever pointed that out to her she wasn’t sure, but she made a mental note to work on it. It hadn’t even occurred to her that a fault on her part could have been part of the reason he’d succeeded, but she was really trying to drive a point home. “And?”

“I didn’t lower my head at all. Kept my eye on the target-“

“Yeah – we all saw where your not-lowered-head ended up. Not too hard to keep looking!” someone at the back jeered.

As the guys snickered, a purplish hue crept over Zed’s cheeks and Tyra’s brows knit together. Zombies blushed a different colour? She’d seen the footage of when the z-bands were tampered with, but she hadn’t thought their blood was a different colour. Fascinating. 

And kind of pretty.

They opened their mouths to speak at the same time, but Tyra was louder. “No, his head hit right where it should have for a perfect tackle – around my ribs. I didn’t expect anyone to not tackle me properly just because I have boobs.”

The shoulders that had crept up towards Zed’s ears lowered as the air rushed from his lungs in a deep sigh. A corner of her mouth quirked up. “Besides, his head was too low if he was actually trying to get a face full of tiddy. Definitely would have gotten a fail,” she said seriously, shaking her head. Tyra’s jaw was clenched from the effort to not break out into a grin as the team erupted into laughter. She only let it out when Zed scowled and shoved her shoulder, forcing her to take a few steps to the side so she wouldn’t fall over.

“Remember,” she began, chopping the air in an attempt to show she was now legitimately serious. “Heads up, guys. Hug them like you’ll never let go, and the best place to grab is around their thighs. Even one leg is good enough. It gives you much better leverage.”

“Ok, so, sure. You can avoid tackles, and you can talk about how to do the perfect tackle. But how do we know you can actually make them?” 

Tyra looked at the guys in front of her blankly, trying to figure out who had just said that. It took her a beat, but a smug smile slid onto her face. “Y’all just wanna see me tackle someone, huh? Just to see if I can do it? And let me guess who you want to volunteer…” she trailed off, rubbing her chin as she surveyed the group. Not that she had to think too hard about who they’d pick. “Zed?”

A sea of heads bobbed up and down, and she opened her mouth, but Zed beat her to the punch this time. “Look, if you really need to show them, you should pi-“

“Pick someone else?” she asked, rounding on him with her hands on her hips. The absolute audacity. “What, you think I can’t tackle you? It’s on, zom-boy.”

Her audience oohed collectively, and Bonzo called from the stands, “I think you made a mistake, buddy!”

Tyra had almost forgotten they were there, but whatever irritation Eliza had felt earlier seemed to have vanished because when Tyra looked over she was grinning at her. “Yeah, put his punk ass in its place.”

Chuckling, she turned her attention back to Zed. “I can tackle like I would if I were playing rugby?”

He smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. “I wouldn’t expect you to change the way you tackle.”

What a smartass. She nodded to the ball in his hand and swept her arm out to the open field. “You have the ball, get to running.” As he jogged past her, he wiggled his eyebrows. 

While he picked up speed, he wasn’t running nearly as fast as normal. Eliza had been right – he was a punk. The audacity. Did he really think she couldn’t manage to take him down? Oh well, she wasn’t going to hold back. Her toes flexed in her shoes for a second, but then she was off like a shot. Tyra ran wide, coming at him the same way he’d tackled her. Except when she hit him, she went low.

One arm wrapped around the back of his knee and the other went around his lower back and she pushed off the ground as hard as she could. His own momentum helped bring him to the ground, and it was his turn to grunt as the air rushed out of his lungs. Her landing hadn’t been the softest, but Tyra was grinning when she pressed her palm into the turf, the other still slung around his back. The whooping of their friends in the stands was clearly heard across the field.

“Still think I should have picked someone else?”

The only response she received was another grunt, and the grin dropped from her face. “You ok?” Even as she asked, she brought her knees beneath her to start running her hands along his side, his arm, and his shoulder. She’d injured enough people - and been injured - to know what she should be looking for. 

He squirmed at her touch and rolled onto his back so he could look up at her. “Yeah, I’m good…just not used to not having shoulder pads when I hit the ground,” he said, though his smile was a little tight.

Tyra frowned, gaze shifting to the shoulder that took the impact. “But your shoulder is ok?” He grabbed the hand she had reached out to touch it with.

“Yes, promise.”

Most of the team was staring at them slack-jawed the entire walk back as if they hadn’t had time to adjust to what they’d seen. Zed stood beside her, arms crossed, and frowned at the lot of them. She could have sworn he rolled his shoulder a little as he spoke. “Satisfied?”

The nodding heads were interrupted by a loudmouth. “How do we know he didn’t just let her take him down? They’re friends, or whatever; he could just be making her look good.”

All those nodding heads turned to look at the idiot. Kyle. They all looked at him as if he had the intelligence of a rock, or were a certain starfish that lived under one. Zed’s palm smacked his forehead so hard she swore cheerleaders turned to see what the sound had been. “Are you kidding me?”

Tyra touched his arm as she stepped forward, shaking her head. “No, no, it’s a valid point, Zed. So, you’re saying you want someone we know wouldn’t help me out?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Kyle shot back smugly, clearly not looking around him. If he had, he would have seen the knowing smirks on everyone’s faces. 

Tapping her finger against her lips in faux-thought, Tyra looked around absently. “Hmmm, if only there were someone we could all be sure would never, ever help me in a million years…ah, Kyle. Thank you for volunteering.”

His eyes widened and his mouth gaped like a fish out of water. “No, wait-“

“What? If you think she faked it, what’s the problem?” their center asked innocently, raising a green brow.

“Fitz, please. I never fake it.” There was a beat as she stood there, jaw clenched to contain her laughter until it sunk in for the first person. One bleat of laughter was all it took for the rest of them to get it, and their loudness gave her enough cover to sneak in her own snicker.

As the laughter died down, she stepped to the side, leaving a sizable path between herself and the Captain. “Now go.”

He wasn’t as quick to leave as Zed had been, shifting his weight from one foot to the other a few times before huffing and making his way to the field. As she watched him run, Tyra thought about the best way to get him. She was used to tackling people shorter than her, but Kyle was about the same height, maybe a bit taller in his cleats. Not as normal, but she’d run into girls as tall as she was in games before. 

The tackle came much more naturally than trying to bring down someone half a foot taller than she was; it was one she’d used a few times to throw off a pass. She hit him at a diagonal, grabbing high and twisting back, using her full weight to wrench him back and down. 

It must have been a bit more force than she needed because they rolled along the grass when they hit the ground. Somewhere along the way, his struggling had resulted in his head smashing into her face, which wasn’t pleasant but not uncommon. They’d barely stopped rolling, and yet Zed was already there. “Where are you bleeding?”  
It didn’t come out a question so much as a demanding statement and Tyra squinted up at him. He must have eyes like a hawk to have seen her catch a head to the face _while_ she was tumbling. “You can’t just ask someone where they’re bleeding Zed, God,” she grumbled, knowing her humour was lost on his seriousness. 

She shoved Kyle off of her in order to sit up and spat blood into the grass. “I just took a chunk out of my cheek, I’m fine,” Tyra explained, gingerly poking at her cheek with her tongue. Bad idea; a lot of wincing was involved. 

None of the concern left his face, the frown and drawn brows staying even as he helped Tyra to her feet. She couldn’t help studying him as he glared down at his teammate flat on his back. He hadn’t wondered if she’d been bleeding, he just wanted to know where. How had he known? She’d barely registered the fact that her mouth tasted irony and he’d already rushed over.

“Are you good now, Kyle?” Zed spat, though all he received was a groan. 

Seeing his hands balled into fists, Tyra put her hand on his arm. “I’m ok, it was my fault – I should’ve had my mouth guard in for all of the tackles, Zed,” she murmured, trying to catch his eye. All his focus seemed to be on burning a hole through Kyle’s head straight into the grass. “You don’t need to be so mad at him.”

Turning his murderous stare on her, it took a beat for him to study her face before his own softened. That hint of a smile should be illegal, and to cover the cartoony _ba-dump_ of her chest, Tyra spat again.

“Go rinse your mouth out,” he ordered, though there was that softness in his eyes that took the edge off his words. Turning his attention to the team, his eyes narrowed again. “All good? Ready to stop bitching and listen to her?”

Everyone nodded, and most heads turned as she made her way past them to get her water bottle. That wasn’t irritating. It wasn’t even the worst injury she’d gotten during a practice, but everyone was so serious about it. Taking a swig and swishing it around, her annoyance at the concern on their faces turned to amazement. What a one-eighty from half an hour ago.

“Great. Then let’s get going – Tyra already told us what to do. If we push ourselves, we might even get to finish the whole thing in the next hour and a half,” Zed commanded, already jogging past the rest of them to start their laps. 

Spitting the water out, Tyra filled her mouth halfway again. She knew she should really use salt water, but she didn’t want to leave the field. If it was still bothering her, she’d do it at home. They probably had some saline solution around somewhere. Making a nice steady stream with her next spit, she tossed her bottle down and reached up to undo her bun. It had been progressively looser since Zed had tackled her, but rolling around had it drooping to the point it was touching the back of her neck. Which was sweaty. 

Not bothering to try and comb out the matted bits, she wrapped her hair tie around a few times, leaving an interesting ponytail. At least, she figured it was fairly crazy judging from the way it was poofing out around the tie on the last pass through. 

With a quick stretch of her arms over her head, Tyra gave a sigh and jogged out to join in on practice. Her last rinse had been mostly clear, so not even Captain Concern could fault her for not taking care of herself. 

Having not started in the crowd, she ran by more people than she normally did. Each one gave her a nod in solidarity as she went by, and each nod felt a little weird. As weird as it was, it added more bounce to her step. Practice had started out rocky, but she now felt more accepted than she had the rest of the week. Definitely more that the start of practice. By the time she caught up to Zed, she was practically floating. “See? I told you I was fine.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than a player from behind called out, “Your leg is bleeding, coach!”


	7. Chapter 7

At first she had only heard the fact that someone other than Zed had called her coach. Playing it back over, she twisted around and wouldn’t you know it, there were some marks on the back of her calf. It wasn’t too bad, but there were a few trickles of blood running down her leg and into her sock. Good thing she had decided on black ones today. “Thanks, man. It must have been from all the leg tangling.”

Zed frowned down at her, leaning back a bit to glance at her leg. His eyes narrowed as they followed the trickles along her calf – Tyra nearly tripped watching him. “You should clean that – Kyle doesn’t take very good care of his cleats.”

“I’m fine. It’s just like, a scrape or something. You don’t even know it was from his cleats. Could have been from a stick – there are a surprising amount of trees around this field.”

That didn’t seem enough to satiate him, because he was still staring at her. With that same frown. It was unsettling. “It’s still bleeding,” he said flatly, as if she had missed the point of his first remark.

“Yeah, ok, I’ll do it after. A little – hey!” Her speech about how a little blood never hurt anyone was cut short as he turned and swept her up into his arms, mid-stride. It would have been impressive if Tyra wasn’t so annoyed. 

“We’re cleaning it now.” Such a simple statement, said with the same certainty someone would say that it was raining. Not like he had just hijacked her from practice and was carrying her across the field bridal style, Tyra struggling to get out of his arms.

“Put me down!” she demanded, trying to wrench herself from his grip. All it did was make him hold her tighter; press her more firmly against his chest. Tyra settled for crossing her arms as best she could and huffing loudly every few steps. 

How did people in movies find this swoon-worthy? Being cradled in someone’s arms; it just felt demeaning – she had two legs. She could walk if she wanted. The fact that he was strong enough she couldn’t free herself wasn’t appealing in the least. Neither was the firmness of the chest she was pressed against. Nope.

For all her struggling, Zed placed her gently onto the bench. Not that she thanked him for not dropping her like a sack of flour as he went to grab the first aid kit. Instead, Tyra scowled and twisted her leg to see the wound a bit better. There was some bruising showing up around the three small, uneven punctures in the meat of her calf. It definitely had been from Kyle’s cleats. “Fine, it wasn’t a scrape,” she grumbled to herself, squeezing the skin around it to make it bleed a little more.

“I heard that.” Sitting on his heels in front of her, Zed grabbed her leg and propped her foot up on his thigh. 

Her scowl deepened as she tried to pull her leg back, but he had a vice grip around her ankle. “I can do this myself!” Tyra cried, not that Zed even looked up from the bag.

“Except you didn’t. You didn’t even want to come over here,” he said evenly, fixing her with a stare as he released her leg to open an alcohol wipe. Something about it made it very clear to her she should sit still.

“It isn’t a big deal, man. I’ve had worse b-“ Tyra’s own hiss interrupted her at the sting of the alcohol against her open skin. Her instinctive reaction was to pull her leg back, but his strong fingers were wrapped around her ankle again. “That stings,” she moped. A very grown-up and intellectual way to express herself.

Looking up at her from his contorted position to examine the back of her leg without twisting it too much, he raised his brow slightly. “Baby.”

While his tone was teasing, it didn’t help being called out. Tyra could take any kind of pain – except pinching or stinging. Her pout only stayed for so long, as she watched the gentle care he took to squeeze her leg in order to see how much it was still bleeding. Way gentler than the rough way she’d have handled it. “Why are you freaking out, Zed?” she asked, much softer than she’d intended. “On the field with my cheek, and now this.”

He stayed quiet as he examined her leg, swiping the small droplets of blood that had appeared with the wipe. It didn’t sting as much, but Tyra still flinched. “I don’t like when my friends are hurt or sick…” Zed sighed, flicking his eyes up from her leg to her face for a second. “Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have carried you. That was a little much.”

His attention was back on her leg now, slowly wrapping a stretch bandage around the wounded area. The care he put into it, even undoing some of the wrapping when it wasn’t sitting a hundred percent straight brought a small smile to her face. “Its fine,” she began, adjusting the way she was sitting to make it easier for him, leaning her weight to one side and twisting her leg a little. He was sweet, caring. She couldn’t exactly stay annoyed at him, could she? “You shouldn’t apologize for caring about people, you know.”

He smiled up at her, thumbs gently smoothing the tape to keep the bandage in place. Sometimes he really was unfair, like the way he didn’t even seem to notice his thumbs were gently stroking her leg. Even though he’d finished with it, his warm hands were still loosely wrapped around her calf as his thumbs moved up and down. “Does that mean we can go for ice cream?” Zed asked, wiggling his eyebrows at her. 

Rolling her eyes and her head back, she pressed her foot against his chest, hard enough that he leaned back on his hands. “Don’t push it, Necrodopolous.” 

She couldn’t fight the smile on her face as he laughed and got up, brushing his legs off. “Ok, fine, not today. But we are going to go eventually,” he teased, offering her a hand up from the bench.

While she took it, Tyra shook her head. “I’m sure you’ll blackmail me into going at some point.”

Zed winced, and she instantly regretted the words that had just left her mouth. It was too soon to joke about it, apparently. “I’m sorry about that. If I can’t be sorry for carrying you, I can at least be sorry for forcing you to come to practice.”

Her hands immediately started slicing the air in front of her as her head shook emphatically. “No, no, I was just teasing you. I’m glad I came. Really. You know how pumped I am about this,” she explained in a rush. Why did she always say dumb things?

Tyra had been about to elaborate, really drive the point home, but his beaming smile disarmed her. “Alright, and I do know,” he said before turning back to the field. “You’re sitting this practice out, by the way.”

As if he didn’t have over a hundred pounds on her, he sped off before she could protest. Or more likely, before she could fight him for being stupid. Apparently after you take someone down to the ground, they take you more seriously. Tyra’s hands balled into fists in annoyance, but she just crossed her arms to keep them from acting on their own.

Watching them run through the practice she had come up with and not participating at all felt wrong. She’d designed it, wanted to push them, and thought it was only fair that she pushed herself to her limit as well. Tyra couldn’t sit still and paced the side of the field. Even though Eliza and Bonzo leaned against the railing of the bleachers to talk, her eyes were on the turf. She kept reassuring them she was listening every time she yelled instructions to players overtop of whatever her friends were saying. She really was trying to pay attention to them.

Zed kept looking over at her, even more than he had on Monday when she had first come to practice. She childishly stuck her tongue out at him each time, and he only grinned back. Sometimes he even stuck his tongue out too. It was annoying. Especially because every time she tried to edge her way onto the field, he stopped what he was doing and started to make his way over. Her mouth was still sore, and she didn’t particularly feel like arguing with herself – which was exactly what trying to change Zed’s mind was like.

That time in Cooking when they’d argued half the class away about what dish they were going to make that followed the parameters on the board was honestly more evidence of that than she’d ever need. Tyra had come close to stabbing him more than once because of his circular argument, and then by the time she realized what time it was, they only had enough time to make his dish anyway. He tried to tell her it just worked out that way, but she felt it in her bones that he’d done it on purpose. If he was that stubborn about food, there was no way he’d let her on the field without at least half an hour of arguing; and they’d missed that much already.

Aside from the tackling nonsense that had eaten into their time, the practice was better. Definitely an improvement over what she had seen throughout the week. Nobody received any punishment for not giving their all. Even Kyle was keeping up, albeit while sulking. When it was over, Tyra sighed at the congregation of concerned faces pressing in on her.

Tyra jumped up on the bench in order to see everyone easily. “For the last time. I. Am. Fine. Your captain is a drama queen,” she said pointedly, eyeing Zed. He just smiled and shrugged. No fun. “However…good job, guys. I think that’s the best I’ve seen you look so far. And as long as you try to shake the bad habits…we’ll start fifteen minutes of tackle training on Monday.”

The cheering was a surprise, though she could understand. If someone had taken her tackling time away, she would have been pissed. “Yeah yeah. Let me finish. I know the first game of the season is on Friday. Just a week away. I’m curious - how many of you think you’ll win?” Tyra asked, her brow arched as she paused for a response. Any kind would have been better than the silence and confusion she was met with. “Hands up.”

Only a few hands rose tentatively, and she nodded grimly. “I agree. Today, it’s definitely unsure. But on Thursday, I expect every hand in the air.” Looking out at the resolved faces, she cracked her knuckles as she shifted her focus. “How about this – after this week, who knows what their weaknesses are?”

Hands rose at varying speeds. Some shot up; some slowly put their palm to the sky, while others barely made their raised hands visible. Not every hand went up, but enough that she knew it meant a realization on their part as a whole. Tyra couldn’t help the satisfied smile that stretched across her face. “Good. Build them into strengths.”

As the team filed back to the school to get changed, Eliza and Bonzo joined her. “Well, I guess that was more exciting than usual?” Bonzo offered, flashing a lopsided smile.

They’d been nice enough to not talk about practice while Tyra had been intently watching, but now Eliza was back to rubbing her hands together. “Watching their frustration as you kept dodging them wasn’t nearly as good as when you destroyed Kyle! I know you were busy being babied by our resident mom, but he took a full four minutes to get up – I timed it,” she cackled, a borderline evil grin on her face. Maybe not so borderline. 

“Four?” Tyra laughed, shaking her head. “You’d think his head would be harder than my face, but I’m telling you. When you’re used to hitting the ground with pads, you forget how to fall and not kill yourself. I still think Zed hurt his shoulder when he hit the dirt.”

“Oh my God. Yes! That was awesome!” Eliza paused to go over what she had just said, waving a hand in the air as if she could shoo the words away, along with the excitement in her tone. “Not if he hurt himself, but that takedown! Kyle’s was gratifying, but Zed’s was…”

“Impressive,” Bonzo finished, nodding in agreement. “I’m not sure I’d have been able to take him down as easily, and he’s only a few inches taller than me. Sure, it’s not like if Eliza had done it, but still.”

Tyra snorted as Eliza glared up at him, though she tried to cover it up with a cough when the glare was fixed on her. “Mmhm, ok. Just because all of you are giants, doesn’t mean you get to pick on my height. I’m not that short,” Eliza griped, crossing her arms.

“That’s right, you’re only…” Tyra feigned concentration to tick off her fingers as she mouthed each number. “Eight inches shorter than me. Heck, I’d be impressed if Eliza – without knowing what she was doing – could take _me_ down, let alone Zed.”

Tyra snickered as she darted out of the way of a combat boot-clad foot, hopping onto the bench to hide behind Bonzo. Eliza glared up at her, but Tyra had a hold on his shoulders and tilted him in order to block the other girl’s path. She stuck her tongue out before asking, “What did you think? Have you guys been to other practices? How did mine measure up? Tackling time aside, that is.”

Bonzo turned his head to at least look at her out of the corner of his eye. “More organized, for sure. Everyone was doing something, not just sitting around watching other people practice.”

“Yeah, and they were all, I dunno. Trying?” Eliza offered, though she shrugged her shoulders. “I was really only here to watch people get extra laps for not listening, and that never happened. So in my opinion, two out of five stars.”

Tyra laughed and felt the jiggle of Bonzo’s silent chuckle in his shoulders. She could work with that. “Two out of five; not bad, considering what would have made it five stars would mean it was a worse practice. And you?” She squeezed the massive shoulders beneath her hands. Jesus. If only he was interested in sports. Two giants would be better than one, especially with how solid Bonzo was. Oh well. “What would your rating be?”

His head fell back to look up at her, his signature lopsided grin on his face. “Perfect score. I saw everything I wanted to see, which was you getting the proper respect from the team that you deserve as some kind of sports badass.”

She couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not, which was the problem of having a constant grin on his face. Tyra decided to treat it like one and shoved her fingers into his thick green hair to palm his head and shake it a little. “That’s right. So don’t sass me too hard – if I can take Zed down, you’re not too hard either, Bonzo.”

“Now that would be something I would watch – you just demolishing all the tallest people at school. A punishment for being above average height and making the short people feel worse,” Eliza said, eyes bright at the prospect. “Make it for charity and have people pay to watch. I’d pay at least five bucks.”

They all laughed, but a glance at her phone had Tyra hopping off the bench and citing Chemistry homework as an excuse to get going. As she waved goodbye, it occurred to her that Zed hadn’t stuck around to chat with them. It was weird, and definitely heightened her suspicion of his shoulder being injured. Her worries vanished when she stepped out of the change room and saw him leaning against the wall. Of course he was waiting somewhere. He was Zed.

“Let me make sure you get home ok,” he said seriously as he pushed off of the wall.

Tyra snorted as she adjusted her backpack, not waiting for him to fall into step before heading down the hallway. “I bit a chunk of my cheek out, and have like, two punctures from a stick on my leg. I didn’t get a concussion. Besides, I rode my bike.”

“Yeah, ok, but I have some counterpoints? One; I have long legs and could run beside you if you weren’t pedaling like, full speed,” he started, using those same legs to easily catch up to her. “Two; while you don’t have a concussion, I still feel - as team captain - that I have a sense of duty to make sure you’re ok-“

“Did you know they were going to do that today? Refuse to practice?” Tyra blurted out. He’d been saying nonsense, and the thought had been nagging her since practice began. How Zed didn’t look surprised by the mutiny at all.

“No, I didn’t. Promise,” he said, firmly shaking his head. “If I had, I wouldn’t have let them leave the locker room without smartening up. Kyle might have ended up spending practice in a locker.”

She squinted at him, lips pursed as she tried to fit the pieces together. “Then why were you following me everywhere today?”

Zed winced, shoulders rising to his ears. That was never good. Neither was the very pregnant pause before he answered. “Yesterday…a bunch of them said they were tired of the practices you’d been making them do. That they were going to make a point. They talked about having a few things they would do in the hall,” he admitted, shoulders drooping as he sighed. “Honestly, I think they thought I’d left already, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so open about it.”

Frowning, she stopped walking, and he spun on his heel as soon as he realized. “So, you were what? My guardian? I don’t-“

His hands flew up defensively. “I know, I know. You don’t need protecting. I was more of a… preventative measure than a guard. I scared some off by glaring, so more like. Bug spray to keep pests away?”

Tyra’s eyes narrowed as her hands rested on her hips. She watched him take a deep breath with his eyes closed, clearly anticipating getting yelled at. Except the more she thought about it, the more it made sense. Not to mention it was nice. Resident mom indeed.

“Well…I probably would have punched someone, depending on what they’d planned to do. That wouldn’t have been good for anybody, mostly me. So fine; I retroactively accept your offer of being pest repellent.”

One of his eyes tentatively opened and met her gaze. “So I’m not in trouble?”

What a dork. Tyra brushed by him so he wouldn’t see her smiling. “If you do it again instead of just warning me, you will be.”

He fell into step with her again, and a quick glance showed he was smiling. Hands stuffed in his pockets, with a wide, close-mouthed smile. They made it to the bike rack in relative silence, apart from his occasional humming; though he started laughing as soon as she unlocked her bike.

“This is just...too perfect,” he crowed, clasping his hands in front of his chest.

Tyra didn’t see what was so funny that he had to lean on the rack for support. So her bike was a little retro. It had a wide seat and the curve to allow someone to wear a skirt and be more dignified. He didn’t even know there was a basket that easily attached to the front, and he was killing himself laughing. 

“This right here,” she began, indicating his general Zed-ness with a wave of her hand. “This is why we can’t have ice cream.”


	8. Chapter 8

Friday. Gameday. Tyra was practically vibrating through her steering wheel as she pulled into the parking lot. A frown creased her brow as she parked, noting the shiny bus loading up with cheerleaders. There was a custom wrap with the Shrimp logo as well as a bunch of school spirit crap all over the side. It was kind of ugly in its garishness, but at least it was new. The bus the guys were leaning against was faded, even for school bus yellow.

As she got closer, backpack slung over her shoulder, she noticed the letters on the side of their bus were peeling back at the edges. The seats inside most likely sucked too, but at least she didn’t have to ride with the super peppy cheerleaders. Sure, she was pumped; but dealing with hyperactive people was not her strong suit. People in general weren’t her strong suit.

Some of the team were inside, their voices drifting through the open windows, but Zed was one of the ones waiting against the bus. Of course. He seemed to still be a little pouty from earlier in the day, when she’d said she couldn’t hang out with the team after school. She wanted to watch playback of their practice games that week. The disappointment on his face had been clear, but he’d offered to watch it with her instead.

That was a complete no-no. She couldn’t have distractions, which was actually the truth for once. It hadn’t stopped him from looking like a scolded puppy, and it seemed he’d only partially recovered. As she walked over, giving him a little wave, she wondered if he had a point. Maybe it would be better to have someone who knew more about the game to go over the footage with her. Just not at her house. 

“Next time, ok?” she offered, though his face scrunched in confusion. Right. He was nowhere near her train of thought. “The game footage. We can watch it together next time.”

Any traces of injured feelings were immediately banished by his bright smile. “Yeah, that sounds good! I can bring snacks…” Zed faltered at her pursed lips. “Serious snacks. Because it’s serious time. Not fun hangout time. Notebooks and focus.”

“Ok, now you’re just being a dork again. Though, that is your default setting…” Tyra chuckled, heading for the bus doors.

“You’re not wrong,” he grinned as he followed behind her, pausing to look around at the seats already taken. “Do you wanna sit together?”

As her eyes swept over the bus, she nodded slowly, lips pursed. There weren’t many of the guys that shared classes with her, even if they were in the same year. “I do _not_ want to sit beside Coach,” she murmured as she slid into a bench near the front of the bus. “So, yes.”

Tyra was surprised that they actually spoke to each other the entire ride, punctuated by laughter most of the time; though that wasn’t unusual. A lot of the time at school, others filled out conversation, or it was just bits of time during class. Practice wasn’t generally a time for standing around and talking – at least not Tyra’s practices – and since she consistently shot down his attempts to hang out, it was the longest stretch of time they’d spent together. Sometimes those sitting around would interrupt to share something on their phone, but for the most part, it was just the two of them. There hadn’t even really been a lull since they’d tried to decide what music to listen to. An easy, flowing conversation had continued, moving from music, to movies – even talking about the homework in English wasn’t a bad reminder of the work she’d still have to do that weekend. 

When they pulled into the parking lot, however, Tyra pulled out her notes from her backpack to quickly flip through. She even felt a little bad asking for some quiet time. 

Not too bad, of course. 

Her seat partner was unobtrusively looking at them as well, and when she snapped her head up, Tyra nearly knocked heads with him. “Wait, how did you know I had notes?” The surprise on his face as he pulled away told her she was glaring, even though she really hadn’t meant to be.

“I’ve seen you looking at them in English. You also are always really careful with your backpack to make sure nothing happens to them,” he explained, picking at a deliberately made hole in his pants. “I think it’s really cool how much you care about this team, and how seriously you take it.” 

Oh. That made sense. Tyra wasn’t even sure why she was so defensive, but before she could say something, she realized nobody was moving off of the parked bus. Twisting around to look at everyone, her lips pursed together. The smug little smirk on Zed’s face when she glanced at him made her eyes narrow. “Go on,” she waved dramatically, arm fully extended towards the doors. “Go get changed, have your pep talk. I’ll see you on the field.”

“We want you and Zed to give it to us,” Christian piped up, and the rest of the heads on the bus nodded in agreement.

This was a joke, right? Or maybe she’d fallen asleep at home, and this was just a weird dream. Tyra’s mouth kept opening, and she was too shocked to let it close completely. When words actually came out, they felt flat and dumb. “I’m not allowed in the locker room.”

As if she didn’t feel stupid enough for saying something obvious, everyone started laughing. Even Coach, with his nasally giggles. “They want it here. You know, the place where we’re all already together?” Zed teased gently as he stood up and turned to face his team.

It was some weird form of betrayal, if that could be positive. Zed’s knowledge about this. Tyra kind of wanted to punch him in the leg as she stood up, but she held back. It was nice, this little ambush. She looked out at the faces, waiting patiently in their seats. Zed nudged her discreetly, shielded by the back of their seat, and she gave a firm nod. “Right. I know these two weeks of practice haven’t been easy-“

“Demon Coach to drag us through hell!”

A mix of laughter and applause followed Zeke’s outburst, and Tyra was smirking before she realized it. “How long have you guys waited to say that…” The sea of grins pulled the other corner of her mouth up.

“Practice was hard, but you guys picked it up. I saw a lot of you at the gym, especially this week. I even told some of you to go home yesterday, so you wouldn’t push too hard before the game. The improvement is getting there guys.” Tyra paused to let her gaze drift over the players, briefly meeting each person’s eye. “I’m proud of you.”

“So am I,” Zed agreed, grabbing their seat back and leaning forward. “We feel like a real, proper team. Keeping our eyes open, heads up. Listening to, and protecting each other. I know we’ll show everyone else out there who we are, but just so you guys know... I’m glad to be a part of this team.”

The squeeze he gave to Tyra’s shoulder as he straightened gave her a surge of pride. As if he was saying she was part of that team too, and she cracked her knuckles against her thighs. “I know I said I’d ask you yesterday, but show of hands. Who thinks we’re going to win today?”

The thud of her hand whacking the roof of the bus made her wince, and she cursed under her breath as she pulled her arm back down and started rubbing her fingers. Zed grabbed her hand and looked it over, running his thumb along her knuckles and the tips of her fingers. Honestly. What a time to be a mother hen. 

Snatching her hand back, the scowl that was forming stopped halfway as she looked back at the team. Every hand was up. Tyra took it in for a second. The fact that all arms were fully extended, not a single person showed a hint of doubt. She turned to Zed, seeing his palm pressed against the roof, his arm up as far as it could go. 

She raised hers again, smiling out at the sea of hands and determined faces. “I just wanted my hand to be the first one up,” Tyra explained, fingertips pressed into the roof. She’d raised it more carefully than last time when she had whipped it into the air. “Because even if your skill has still got room for improvement, and I haven’t seen how your opponents play as a team this year, you know what I know for sure?”

As she paused, looking around at them – she’d never looked at them as closely as a group before – her smile widened into a grin. “You knuckleheads don’t give up,” Tyra declared, shaking her head. “I had people ask for pointers that I had never officially met. You know how I had to make people go home from the gym? Some of you I kicked out three times and still saw you doing your own thing in the park on my way home. Sure, our first week was rocky, but you showed your true colours this week - even Kyle tried harder.”

Hands finally drifted down as the team laughed, though Kyle crossed his arms and scowled at nobody in particular. 

“Even if this game takes a turn, at any time, push through.”

A voice from the back of the bus piped up, “We already nearly die at practice every day, what’s a game compared to that?”

More chuckles and nodding heads, though that only made her grin. “That’s exactly right. You know what else? We’re the mother fucking Shrimp. Three, two, one-“

“GO SHRIMP!”

Coach rubbed his ears from the ferocity with which everyone roared out, and even though Tyra’s ears were ringing a little, she clapped her hands together, grin as wide as humanly possible. “Now go get ready before you’re late.”

She stayed standing as everyone filed by with their equipment bags, and it was wholly unsurprising that Zed waited with her. The cheerleaders could be heard outside the bus, shouting positive things as the football team walked by them towards the school. 

Tyra looked up at him after the last guy had gotten off the bus. “After you, Miracle Worker,” she teased, shaking her head at him. He made her roll her eyes as he grinned and bowed as dramatically as their cramped space allowed, flourishing his hand out in front of him. The flourish got to her and she laughed, shoving his bowed head a little. 

Out the window, Tyra could barely see the top of a white-haired head lingering before they turned and their ponytail snapped behind them. Addison. Why was she just hanging around? It wasn’t like she couldn’t talk to Zed at literally any time at school. Or his house. Or use a cell phone. The moment of distraction was over as Zed stood up. “What miracle have I worked, exactly?” he asked, combing a hand through his hair to fix where her hand had mussed it. Not like he was going to put a helmet on or anything.

“Getting them to actually _want_ \- no, to _believe_ that they can win.”

“Since my z-band…disaster, everyone just went back to thinking the team would be like they were before,” he explained, wincing at the memory. “But you saw those hands.”

Tyra’s eyes rolled again. “They’re just pumped. Anybody could-“

“No.”

Zed was so serious, his voice so insistent, it was actually surprising. Any time the jovial giant got serious, Tyra was always surprised, but this was different. He looked a little sad for a second, but as soon as he blinked, it vanished.

“I tried for two years. That’s two years with new players, fresh faces who shouldn’t have just accepted that we were losing. You did it in two weeks. _You_ did,” he said, just stopping himself from poking her in the chest to punctuate his point. His finger hung between them for a beat before it zipped up and poked the end of her nose instead.

She wasn’t entirely sure when his smiling face had gotten closer. Had he stepped towards her before or after he’d gotten serious? Obviously he was just a little stooped over because of the short ceiling and she hadn’t noticed. Right? Tyra shook her head at him and reached out, not able to tear her gaze away from the one locked onto her. “Ok, Captain. Now go-“

Tyra had wanted to give him a push, like she had done many times before. A palm against his solid chest which always instantly gave way to the pressure as they laughed or grinned at whatever dorky thing he’d done. This time, however, he didn’t budge. Zed pressed his hand over hers and held it against him. Not hard enough she couldn’t pull away, but enough pressure that it was clearly deliberate and not just a reaction.

As her brain struggled to process what was happening, the words that were trying to come out of her mouth turned into random sounds that stopped and started. That was obviously why her skin was feeling warm, she was having some kind of mental breakdown. Definitely nothing to do with their close proximity, alone on a bus. Or how he was just standing there, holding her hand to his chest and not saying anything. Weirdo.

When she finally rebooted and cleared her throat Tyra pushed again, harder this time. He didn’t hold her hand there when she pulled it back. “Go get ready to win.”

How she got off the bus and to the field was a little fuzzy, and if she stopped thinking about the game for more than a few seconds, she could feel the warmth of his chest beneath her hand; the soft intensity of his gaze. So Tyra paced in front of the bleachers where their bench was, chewing on the tip of her thumb. The longer she paced, the more nervous she became, and the further the warm, solid boy slid from her thoughts. 

The heavy weight in her gut wasn’t new, but she’d never felt it before a game before. Determined? Sure. Excited, maybe a bit aggressive? Definitely. In her rugby matches, Tyra had had some control. If they were losing, she tried harder, made different decisions, ran faster, hit harder. Now she could only watch. And worry. About the weaknesses of the team that she knew and the strengths of the team she didn’t.

Worry and watch.

The crowd roaring snapped her out of her spiral, and she looked up to see the home team running onto the field. She did a double-take on their uniforms – dark orange, green and gold. “Are you trying to be ugly pumpkins?” she mumbled, already disliking the swagger they strode across the field with. 

She’d somehow forgotten the cheer team was so close until they started jumping around and cheering as the Shrimp ran out. They were being louder than normal, probably trying to make up for the fact that their side of the bleachers wasn’t even half full. Tyra cupped her hand around her mouth and joined in, her fist beating the air as she whooped. 

They could do this.


	9. Chapter 9

The ball was up. 

As the seconds on the game clock counted down, Tyra could have sworn her heartbeat was in sync. Every time one passed, she felt her heart slam against her ribs as the ball spiraled through the air. Someone caught it perfectly and ran like the wind. Then her heart started smacking against her ribs like a championship Ping-Pong ball. They were so close to the end zone – and then were completely destroyed by Zeke as the clock hit zero. 

The Shrimp had only been up by three points, a very narrow victory, but from the way the boys were yelling, jumping on each other, and tossing their helmets, you’d think they’d had a clean sweep. Someone was screaming, causing the people nearby to cover their ears. Tyra looked around for a second until she realized who it was.

It was her.

Coach seemed to be ready to break down into tears, muttering something about how they hadn’t beat this team the last two years, and his slacks. What they had to do with each other, she didn’t want to know and sidestepped the hug he tried to wrap her in. 

It took her towards the team, where she was swept up in their excitement, all their hooting and hollering. Tyra was jostled by shoulder pads and slaps on the back. Then she really screamed.

When she whipped around to glare at the people behind her, her wet hair slapped against her cheek. As she blinked the water out of her eyes, she saw two players holding the water cooler between them. Now empty, of course. “We couldn’t have done it without you. This is the reward,” they declared, high fiving each other. 

Tyra could feel her clothes clinging to her as the water soaked in, and before she could murder the giddy teens in front of her, she was hauled up off her feet. Zed and one of their other tall players stood together, each holding one of her legs so she half sat on their shoulders. Her disorientation was only heightened as someone threw something at her, and she instinctively caught it.

The ball. A grin spread across her face and she held the ball up over her head to the hoots of the team. “You’re fucking right we won! What did I tell you? Get used to it, because we’ll keep winning. Now go get changed so we can go home!” Tyra shouted, earning one last cheer from the team.

As they went off to get changed, she was jostled solely to Zed’s shoulder. Tyra stiffened at the movement. Feeling for a second as if she might fall, she dropped the ball to wrap her fingers beneath his shoulder pad. The panic subsided as his arms wrapped around her legs, and the white-knuckled grip relaxed. For about a second. Then Zed tossed her. 

It was only so that he could flip her around to face him as he lowered her to the ground in a controlled slide, but it didn’t make her gasp any less when he did it. He chuckled, arms still loosely around her. “I told you it was you.”

That damn bright smile. Tyra smiled despite herself, and the fact that she wanted to slap him for scaring the shit out of her. “Yeah, yeah. I guess I’ll believe you,” she said as she stepped back, his arms falling back to his sides as she did. 

She pulled at her shirt, which suctioned back to her skin as soon as she released it. “Also, this was great and everything, but I’ll freeze on the bus…” Tyra yanked her phone out of her pocket in alarm, sighing with relief as she examined it. “You idiots are lucky my phone is water-resistant.”

As she scowled up at him, she could practically see the gears turning in Zed’s head. Like somehow he only now understood that she was soaking wet. “You can wear my jersey,” he blurted out.

Tyra just blinked at him for a second. “Why would I want to wear your stanky ass jersey?”

He laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s uh…that’s a good point,” he muttered, and then suddenly brightened. “My team sweats! I have them in my bag! You can wear them, because they’re dry.”

Why he had to walk her through what to do with them and why, she didn’t understand, but nodded anyway. “That’s great, Zed. Thanks.”

He’d also found a plastic bag somewhere for her to put her wet clothes in. That was nice, though Tyra sighed as she came out of the bathroom and looked at her feet again. The sweatpants pooled halfway up her calf. Where they’d found some long enough for him, she didn’t know. The sleeves of the sweatshirt also had been rolled up until the fabric was too thick to roll any farther, and still was only just below her elbow. “How do you even exist being this lanky,” she muttered as she made her way to the parking lot. 

A few of the team members were waiting at the edge of the lot under a light. Zed and the other two zombies on the team, Zeke and Fitz, were among them. The fact that Zed was there told her they were most likely waiting for her – it was kind of a dark parking lot, but they didn’t need to worry. Still, it was kind of sweet. Like she’d just gained an entire gaggle of brothers.

As she jogged down the stairs to meet them, she realized they weren’t alone. Three players from the other team were there, and it was clear the Shrimps were trying to ignore them.

“We would have won if they didn’t have those freaks on their team. They probably screwed with their bracelets again, like when we were freshmen. Just enough so nobody actually noticed,” one guy was saying. He wasn’t actually speaking to them, just being extra loud to make sure they heard him.

Her knuckles cracked ass her fists clenched, Zed was raising his hand. Most likely to wave her over, try and hurry away to the bus. Or maybe he noticed her hands and wanted to tell her to stop. Whatever he’d wanted, he didn’t get it. “Oh? You must be number five then. The one who kept getting sacked. Were you afraid of the zombies? Was that why you fumbled the ball so many times? Or do you just suck balls?” Tyra asked innocently, coming to stand between her team and the loudmouth. Her arms were crossed, though she put as annoyingly peppy a smile as she could on her face.

Even in the dim light of the streetlamp, she could see his ears turn red before he turned around. 

The embarrassment shifted into fury as he noted the school logo on the clothes she was wearing. “I don’t know how you can go to school with them, forget stand next to them,” he spat, taking a step towards her. “Honestly, doesn’t it bother you? The stench of rotting flesh? Being eyed like a snack?”

She heard the team shift behind her as he took another step closer. Tyra didn’t need to look to know Zed would be closest to her – he’d wanted to protect her against his own teammates. He would definitely be ready to protect her now, whether she needed him to or not.

The fury on number five’s face slipped behind a smirk. “Or are you some kind of necro? You like cold hands all over you? Rank ass breath in your face? You’d need to brush your teeth after making out with them, right zombie fucker?” he sneered, having taken his chances with getting a little closer. 

Now he was close enough to smell – he hadn’t showered, obviously. Tyra glanced behind her, and sure enough, Zed was right there. Zeke and Fitz were looking at the ground, the purple blush clear on their faces. The giant, on the other hand, was simmering. His own fists were clenched as he stared defiantly at the threesome in front of them. 

She took a long, slow breath to try and clear the murder from her thoughts. It was to steady the limbs that shook with rage; to be able to smile at the actual idiot standing in front of her. “You know, even if they still ate brains, I think everyone could agree you’d be safe,” she said, sickly sweet. Even one of his cronies coughed to stifle a laugh, hand up to cover his smirk. Tyra was gearing up for more when Zed brushed her elbow and she turned to look at him.

“Just leave him,” he murmured, holding eye contact until she nodded.

Fitz and Zeke were walking as quickly as they could while trying to seem nonchalant, but Zed kept her slow pace at the back of the group. You didn’t have to have great hearing to hear the guy stomping after them. 

“You guys shouldn’t even exist – they should have burned you all when they had the chance!” His voice was getting shrill he was in such a state. “Sterilized your parents and just tossed the babies on a bonfire! No – I’ve got it. Open your little town up like a live-action video game!”

He lined up his arms as if he were holding a rifle, jerking them up every time he took an imaginary shot - one for each of the zombies in front of him. The grin on his face was borderline maniacal. “They probably don’t have these games in your town, but I’m on the leaderboard for Zombie Hunter. I’ve killed soooo many of your kind in the comfort of my own house! Wait until I can come to yours!”

Someone was screaming.

This time, it wasn’t Tyra.

She didn’t remember tackling him at all. She went from standing beside Zed to being on top of the guy, punching him in his loudmouth face. Even though she was straddling his torso, she threw as much of her weight behind her punches as she could. Tyra couldn’t see anything except the piece of garbage in front of her, couldn’t hear anything other than her fists colliding with whatever part of his arm was protecting his face. 

Her first blows must have actually made contact because she could see the blood smeared on his arm and dribbling down his chin when it was visible between punches. There was some on her hands too, but she wasn’t sure who that belonged to – she couldn’t really feel her hands.

“Get this crazy bitch off me!” he shouted, though it came out a bit like a wail. Maybe it was a wail – sound was all distorted.

Arms snuck in beneath her armpits while she was winding up and pulled her off, reminding her that there were other things around her. Other people. It didn’t stop her from trying to kick the thing that was now curled into the fetal position. “You’re such a piece of shit!” she growled, trying to wrench herself out of the hold she was in to get back on top of him. The strong hands clamped around the back of her neck kept head-butting from being an option.

“Tyra, calm down.”

Zed’s voice in her ear was strained but even, and while her chest heaved with each breath, Tyra stopped struggling. She settled for trying to bore a hole through the guy as he was helped up by his friends. Her glare was returned as he held his bloody nose. Look at that. She’d split his lip, too. 

“I’ll get your crazy ass expelled! I’ll-“

Even though Tyra’s feet couldn’t touch the ground, and Zed still had her in a full nelson, her voice was calm as she interrupted him. “Really? Big macho tough guy, the same one who wasn’t afraid to shoot his mouth off in front of eight guys, is going to admit on the record that he got the shit beat out of him by a girl?” she asked, tilting her head as much as she could between Zed’s arms. She couldn’t really shrug, so she flipped her palms to the sky. “That’s fine. But know I’d also go on the record about your hate speech. Even if your school doesn’t care, it’s still a crime. Colleges don’t look too highly on that. Just saying.”

“So is assault!” he spluttered, letting go of his nose for a second. It was a bad idea, as blood gushed down his face before he clamped his hand back over it.

“I don’t give a shit,” Tyra said simply, raising her eyebrow at him. “Do you?”

His mouth opened and closed a few times before he turned on his heel and stormed off. Only when they were out of sight did Zed put her back on the ground. Her hands were trembling from the adrenaline, and her breaths were shaky, but she wasn’t seeing red anymore. Tyra flexed her hands some as the collective breath the guys had been holding was released.

“That was awesome!”

“I thought you were gonna kill that guy!”

“What a jackass!”

She smiled at them all, but her attention was on Zed. He was the only one not chattering at her, and he looked tired. As if she was looking at Zed in his thirties, not seventeen. Tyra looked down at her hands instead, flexing them again and wincing at the sting of the skin on her knuckles spreading. That’s what she got for not moisturizing – split knuckles.

Everyone was giving her a pat on the back. Zeke and Fitz squeezed her shoulder extra tight. Good. She hadn’t done it for herself. 

“What were you thinking?” Zed was so grave that all the smiles faded and everyone stopped talking. “Even if he couldn’t have gotten a piece of you, if anyone saw, you could be expelled. He wasn’t wrong about that.”

The pain was etched into his face as she looked up at him, but she set her jaw. “I couldn’t stand any of the terrible things he was saying. And,” Tyra paused, dropping her gaze to the ground. “I saw you getting mad.”

She cracked her knuckles as she looked around at the other faces, keeping her wincing to a minimum. Zeke, Fitz, Hunter, Julian, Anthony, Josh, and Caleb. “My getting expelled wouldn’t be as big a loss as you.” Her focus went back to Zed. “Any of you.”

In reality, she hadn’t thought too hard before hitting him. Not at all, really. Tyra had been able to take it until she couldn’t. Though if she were being honest, she felt that if she hadn’t snapped, Zed would have. That would have been very, very bad.

Apparently she was a little transparent because Zed’s brows knit together. “You thought that _I_ would hit him? So you did it first?” he asked hollowly, his expression changing to something unreadable.

Tyra shrugged. She would have been much more comfortable if they’d kept thinking she was great, and not worrying about her. “You, Zeke, Fitz. One of you might have, with all the shit he was saying. While it was really awful, a zombie hitting a human is a much bigger deal. Me…not so much,” she explained, trying to inch her way towards the bus.

Zed stared until the others around them shifted uncomfortably. “Fine. Someone go get the first aid kit. Who knows what kind of diseases that pile of garbage has,” he sighed before heading to the bus. 

The rest followed, Tyra included, and got on the bus amidst a sea of whispers. They halted, but as Zed guided her back into her window seat, she could feel the eyes on her. It wasn’t much better when he was handed the first aid kit before they started moving. 

“Don’t fight me this time,” he murmured.

And she didn’t.

He took her hands one at a time, wiping her knuckles gently with an alcohol wipe. Turned out most of the blood wasn’t hers, but she had split two knuckles on each hand open. She tried not to hiss as he dabbed them with the peroxide, but shut her eyes and ground her teeth instead. One was especially bad, jagged where the rest were clean. That one made her flinch as he cleaned it. 

Tyra watched him work in silence. He was much gentler than she or her mother was - and they were being jostled by the bus. It was hard to see his face as he took his time, since the only light was from the streetlamps they passed. That, and she was deliberately trying not to stare at him; especially when he finished wrapping her hands in the gauze bandage and gently ran his thumb along each one before letting them go. 

It took a few minutes of new, awkward silence for Tyra to break. “I’m sorry for getting blood on your sweatshirt,” she mumbled, having been staring at the droplets and smudge since she’d sat down. The moments where she wasn’t looking at Zed, of course.

He didn’t look over at her, and she figured he was still upset with her. Until he opened his mouth. 

“It’s ok, you can keep it…I don’t want your cooties,” he teased, grinning and looking at her out of the corner of his eye. 

He wasn’t still mad. Not mad enough to not joke with her, at least. Tyra nodded, but then they lapsed back into the uneasy silence. With her head resting against the window, and the adrenaline having totally spent her energy, she was almost asleep when he piped up again. She’d almost missed it, with how softly he was speaking.

“I think you may have been right. About me hitting him. I thought I was going to snap – babies on a bonfire? What kind of sick fuck…who even thinks about that? I just saw my little sister burning…and then he was screaming. For a second, I thought I’d done something and hadn’t realized it. Like, I’d blacked out or something. But I hadn’t moved, and you were just pummeling him,” Zed recounted, trailing off before turning to her. “You probably saved me from doing something really stupid.”

“Just leave all the stupid decisions to me,” Tyra said sagely, pressing a hand to her chest. 

They chuckled for a minute before he looked at her earnestly. “I don’t think one of your hits missed. Like, if you were aiming somewhere, you connected. I know that’s not too hard to do when you’re on top of someone like that, but still…it was crazy.”

“Ah…yeah. I’ve had a lot of practice. I’m not only a demon because of my training tactics, though I doubt my old coach relayed that part. I got in fights all the time. Very rarely on the field, but off the field…” Tyra trailed off, shrugging absently. She wasn’t exactly sorry; she only threw a punch if it was justified.

The awkward silence between them was gone after he needled her for some juicer details about her past encounters, and how they’d never gone on her record. Being the golden child most of the time allowed her to occasionally be a demon and get away with it.

When they pulled into the school parking lot, she got off the bus and realized she should have had something in her hand other than her backpack. “Where’s my stuff?” she asked, looking around as if would just roll down the steps to her.

“Oh, sorry,” Fitz said shyly, sticking his hand out to her. Hanging off his pale wrist was the plastic bag full of her damp clothes. And her phone. How she hadn’t noticed that was missing before now was a miracle. “You dropped it when…you know. So I grabbed it, but Zed was cleaning your hands and everything. I held onto it for you, is what I mean.”

Smiling at him, she took it off his outstretched wrist, sliding her phone out from the top. “Thanks, Fitzy. I definitely wasn’t focused enough to have remembered to grab this.”

Tiptoeing to the edge of the chattering group, she cupped her hands around her mouth. “You guys all did great! See you on Monday, or at the gym!”

Tyra barely got a few steps towards her car before the complaining started. 

“Aw, come on!”

“We’re going out for pizza!”

“Reject Zed all you want - but all of us? Can you really do that?” Christian. What a punk.

She clenched her jaw as she tried not to smile. “Guys, I’ve got-“

Her phone buzzing in her hand cut her off, and she held out a finger to shush them as she answered it. She couldn’t exactly run out of earshot; that would be super suspicious. “Hola papá…sí. ¿Usted va a llegar tarde?” Tyra asked, pausing to chew the end of her thumb as she looked out at the expectant faces. “Ah, ok. Yeah, ganamos el partido…trés puntos.”

The fact that he remembered she’d had a game today was huge. Lately, anyway. “No, mama necesitaba dormir. Yeah, it’s fine…todos vamos a comer pizza. Will do. Hasta luego, papa,” she finished, taking the phone away from her ear.

The weird silence was broken by Hunter. “Yooooo! You speak Spanish?”

“Well, hello. My last name is Molina,” she scoffed, stressing the pronunciation.

“That doesn’t mean shit. You think just because Christian’s last name is Adeyemi he speaks…I dunno, whatever language that is? Or Zed’s last name is about as Greek as you can get – you think he knows anything?” Hunter quipped back, before getting shoved by Christian.

“It’s Hausa, for the record…and no, I pretty much just say Baba instead of dad,” he muttered.

“My point. Proven.”

Tyra rolled her eyes and sighed. “Ok, fine. Yes, I speak Spanish. My dad is from Guatemala. He also speaks fluent English, we just always speak Spanish on the phone, but now that the inquisition is over-“

“I took Spanish last year,” Zeke piped up, hands slowly rising above his head. “And while I didn’t understand everything, she said she is coming out for pizza.”

As his hands pumped in the air, the team whooped. Zed, on the other hand, looked completely shocked. “Wait, you’re actually coming?”

“Yes? Didn’t I just say that? To a parent? Anyway, anybody need a ride?” she asked, digging around in the plastic bag for her keys. 

Hunter, Fitz, and Zed all gasped in horror. “What? The MVP isn’t an Uber driver! You’re the one who gets driven around!” Hunter clucked at her, grabbing her by the shoulders and steering her towards his Jeep, the other two members of the peanut gallery in tow.

“What do you mean, MVP? I didn’t even play in the game,” Tyra tried to protest, but the blond was having none of it.

“No, MVPs get doused in water. That’s why you got soaked.”

“…that was you?”

He didn’t even miss a beat. “I’m just saying those are the rules. I plead the fifth in any involvement.”


	10. Chapter 10

The team took up almost all of Seaside Pizza’s tables. They tried to push as many tables together as they could, while still allowing staff to be able to walk through. Any eatery Tyra had ever been to back home was always annoyed at least a little by having a team full of rowdy teens invade their dining room, but everyone had nothing but smiles.

It had made a little more sense after seeing news articles on the walls from Zed’s first year on the team. Either they were sports fans or Zed fans, but either way, she’d never had her order taken with such a genuinely perky attitude. It was equally refreshing and creepy.

Their car group, plus Zeke, had stayed seated together along the wall, three tables squished together. Still close enough to talk to those around them, but contained enough that it was easy conversation. Their table had clapped the loudest when Coach declared he was paying for all the pizza, and Tyra may have gone a bit too hard on her order.

Her mouth was watering when her medium pizza was placed in front of her, and she leaned in to get a good whiff of that fresh bread smell. The steam coming off the pie warmed her face and she wiggled in her seat. 

Thin crust. Half meat lovers, half loaded veggie. Extra cheese. The perfect combination for a pizza sandwich. 

Flipping two opposing slices onto each other, Tyra closed her eyes to take as large a bite as possible. She hadn’t had a chance to try this pizza place, but there was something in their cheese to sauce ratio that told her she would be coming back for more. Not opening her eyes until she had inhaled the rest of the slice, she leaned back from the table as soon as she did.

All her friends were staring at her with either concern or wonderment etched on their faces. It was unsettling to say the least. “What? Did I...get sauce all over my face or something?” she asked, swiping her tongue around her mouth as far out as it could go. There were napkins somewhere, but her tongue was more environmentally friendly. 

“No, that’s not it,” Zeke began, rubbing a hand along his chin. “How do I even say this without sounding like some sort of asshole. We’ve all seen you eat at lunch. Just not as…" 

The silence left as he simply gestured towards her was filled by Hunter. “Have you not eaten at all today? Or maybe yesterday? Did I just black out every other time you’ve eaten?”

While Tyra’s eyebrows had raised expectantly at the prospect of an explanation, they lowered at his questions. “Ok, yeah, I was hungry, and?”

“Not that you eat like a bird normally or anything, but I think none of us have seen you be so...ravenous?” Fitz attempted, half hiding behind his own slice of pizza. “You know you ate those two slices in like, thirty seconds, right?”

Oh. That was the problem? “Yeah...that’s because a lot of you miss me snacking in first period, and forget I have Cooking right after lunch. Sure, Zed is the one who takes the leftovers home, but I’m the one eating half of whatever dish we made in class,” Tyra explained, though that only turned everyone’s attention to her partner.

Unlike her annoyance at being stared at, Zed only shrugged. “If you guys had her cooking, you’d take whatever you could get. Sometimes I get three bites, other times I get an actual meal out of it,” he stated matter-of-factly before taking a large bite of his own cauliflower crust pizza.

“That reminds me,” Tyra got out between bites. “You still have two of my containers, thief.”

Only then did he turn a little sheepish under everyone's gaze. “Oh, yeah. Sorry. They’re all clean, but I’ll bring them on Monday. Promise. And if not, I’ll run extra laps.”

Tyra snorted and held her cup of water up to hide the fact she was talking with her mouth full. “Your extra laps can be you running to your house and running back with my containers.”

The table laughed at their exchange, and Hunter just shook his head and pointed at her with a slice of his pizza. “You better be careful - people might get a wifey vibe off you and be completely confused when it turns out you’re actually a demon,” he teased, free hand pressing to his head. He held up one finger to imitate a horn and wiggled his brows at her.

Her eyes rolled as far back in her head as possible as she flipped him off, earning more laughter from the table, as well as those within earshot. Their conversation shifted focus, back to the game, to what they thought they did well on, and what weaknesses they still felt they had. It let Tyra eat her pizza with only throwing a word or two out in contribution.

“I was wondering, Tyra,” Christian started, earning her attention in his brief pause. “Why did you move for your senior year? Obviously you can’t tell your parents no when they say you’re moving but like, didn’t it suck leaving your friends behind? And won’t it mess with your transcripts if you don’t have your extracurriculars all lined up?”

A long drink of water allowed her to put her thoughts in order before she opened her mouth. Only answer the asked questions with enough detail that nobody asks anything else. Nobody really seemed to care too much past the answers she supplied, but it still didn’t hurt to keep everything close to the vest. “It did kind of suck moving away from my best friends and teammates, but I left the team in good hands. So even though I won’t have three years as captain, I have two clean sweeps, and an interesting thing in being a student coach for a sport I’ve never played before,” Tyra replied, ticking questions off by pressing her fingertips into her thigh.

“And as for why, my dad got offered a job, and its cheaper here than the city, so…” She shrugged at the sentence she had repeated the most since arriving in Seabrook. That was normally the end of the conversation, but apparently Christian was an inquisitive guy.

“What does your dad do for work that he got offered a job across the country?”

“Ok, not quite that far, but he’s a lawyer.”

“Oh, cool,” he mumbled through chewing on the end of his crust. “And your mom was cool with moving so far? I know my mom would have flipped.”

It wasn’t so much that it was a weird conversation - they were all normal questions - Tyra just wasn’t used to people asking more than a cursory question about her moving. Nobody seemed to care to know more about her parents other than she had them. “Not really? Mom’s an ER nurse, so she’s cool finding work wherever. She actually works in the city too, not too-too far from where dad works,” she said, feeling an odd sensation at telling a full truth. 

Zed frowned across the table at her. “I didn’t know your mom was a nurse.”

“Ok?” Tyra asked, palms up. What was there for him to frown about? “It’s part of the reason I don’t worry too much about any injuries I get - she taught me what to worry about, what to patch up and how, and what to call her or emergency right away for. Prime example right here.”

Holding her palms in front of her face, she showed off the bandages wrapped around her knuckles. “This is a patch it myself. Or I guess...a Zed patch up. It’s part of the reason I’m impressed with the way you bandage me up, oh capi-tan,” Tyra grinned, dropping her hands so it was visible.

Laughing, Zed rested his arms on the table and leaned over them a little. “Oh yeah? I’m up to your standards?” he teased, a goofy grin on his face.

“Yup, Nurse Molina would be proud. And…” Tyra looked both ways before leaning across the table and dropping her voice conspiratorially. “Between you and me, your bedside manner is better.

The guys erupted into a bunch of _oooohs_ which had both Tyra and Zed rolling their eyes and telling them to grow up, almost in unison. “You idiots know what I meant. Honestly…”

While she’d been the first one done, it was another while before the rest of her table was done. That was the problem with doing all of the talking - it took longer to eat your food. Tyra didn’t mind sitting and chatting casually with them all. Sure, Zed was always present at the lunch table, but not the rest of them. They floated in and out, but that was one or two at a time. It was nice to get to know them as a unit a bit better. Even the other tables, when she would tune out and eavesdrop, gave her a little more insight into the team.

In that time, though, it had started to get a little chilly. She wasn’t sure if it was from the temperature dropping a bit outside, or the fact she seemed to be under an a/c vent, but she rolled the sleeves of her neon green sweatshirt down until the cuffs pooled at her wrists. Stupid monkey arms of that green giant

Sometime between the last time he said something, and in the middle of her current questioning of how their school was allowed to sell such cute cupcakes at lunch, Fitz had stopped looking at her. Normally she wouldn’t have noticed when someone stopped listening, but it was the second time she’d glanced around the table and he seemed to deliberately avoid looking at her. Wait.

Was his face tinged a little purple?

She stopped mid-sentence to look directly at him and his lavender cheekbones. “Fitz?”

He legitimately looked at the ceiling before answering. “Yes?”

“Is there like, any reason in particular you’re not looking at me?” Tyra asked before pausing to rephrase. “What I mean is, deliberately not looking at me. You don’t normally look at the ceiling when I’m talking to you.”

She wasn’t a quiet person by nature, and with so many people in earshot, she could see heads tilting their way. People trying to seem like they weren’t listening to the conversation. The purple blush on Fitz’s cheeks quickly deepened as he dropped his eyes to his lap.

“Are you, um, cold at all?” he asked, turning his plate with small flicks of his wrist. It made a slight scraping sound every time he moved it, which only made him appear more awkward. “Do you want my jacket maybe?”

“Uh, I guess I’m a little chilly? I’m right under the A/C. But I’m good.” Her brow was knit as she looked at him - he was generally a little nervous, but this was some new level. 

He stopped fidgeting with his plate and started wringing and twisting his fingers on the edge of the table before leaning over the table. Fitz even partially stood up to lean closer, though he glared as the rest of their table leaned in too. “You just look a little...um, like, cold…” Looking as if he were going to die of embarrassment, Fitz motioned at his chest. 

What was he even doing?

Oh.

Tyra looked down, and sure enough, she was a little pointy. Leave it up to Seabrook to not have thick enough sweatshirts.

“Are you, are you not-not wearing a, uh, a…”

“A bra?” At the question, Fitz nodded and slid down in his seat again. Tyra just sighed. “No, it was all wet. You know, from when some geniuses threw a whole lot of water on me?”

The entire table shifted, all of the boys sitting upright in their seats. Except for Fitz, who was a beautiful shade of purple as he mumbled, “Then it would be-”

“In the bag in the car? Where else would I have put it?” Tyra asked incredulously. It took a few beats of awkward silence for her to throw her hands up in the air. “Oh come on, grow up! Are you all thirteen years old and the thought of boobs existing is too much for your brains to handle?”

Before anyone could answer, she launched into what was probably an unnecessary explanation. “If I had put it on, there would have just been big wet patches where the fabrics met. That’s how science works - wet thing makes dry thing wet. I didn’t think it would matter if I had a bra on or not - a lot of my sweatshirts are thick enough so you can’t see even if I’m freezing. I don’t see how it’s my fault that the school bought shitty sweats.”

Her five friends nodded, and even Zed seemed unsure of what to say. Tyra looked at him for some support, but he was looking slightly above her head. “Are you kidding me,” she muttered, rubbing between her eyes. “Do you have any idea how many girls every single day are probably not wearing bras at school?! Whether because their tits are small enough that it doesn’t matter, or because of the cut of the top they’re wearing?”

“True, but we aren’t aware of that,” Christian pointed out, suddenly interested in his phone.

“Ok, fine. How about dances where there is no way they’re wearing a bra, even if it were strapless? You’re not idiots. Do you have trouble not staring at their boobs then? Or are you human - or zombie - beings, and function like normal people? Huh?” She was back to being loud, and the rest of the team was doing their best to not be involved even in the slightest.

“No, I’m not gross.”

“I’m not a perv.”

Other similar things were mumbled by the guys, and she groaned as she pushed her chair back. The sound it made just added to her disappointment as she picked her phone up off the table. “I’m going to go wait at the car until it’s time to go, let everyone calm down from the apparent excitement.”

Tyra wasn’t waiting at the car long, and she kept her arms crossed as she plopped into the passenger seat. It was nothing to do with her lack of bra, and everything to do with her irritation, which only grew the longer the ride was silent. “Seriously? Are you all going to be back to normal on Monday? Or will we just go through the entire practice with nobody able to look at me?” she demanded, twisting to try and see everyone.

Zed finally figured out how his mouth worked. “We just didn’t want you to think we were like...staring at you or anything. After we knew you weren’t wearing a bra.”

“...were you staring _before_?” Tyra asked, remembering that first practice and the reason for their extra laps.

“No!” they all exclaimed in unison, though Fitz’s was more of a squeak. The baby really wasn’t able to handle much.

“Then why would I suddenly think you were staring at my boobs?” The question was asked slowly to let all the words sink in. Really give them time to think before answering. Time they took, from the amount of silence in the car.

“That’s a good point,” Hunter sighed, slumping in his seat.

“I know it’s a good point, it’s why I said it,” Tyra muttered.

It didn’t take much longer to get back to the school parking lot, and there was lots of waving as they exchanged goodnights, see you laters, and drive safes. As soon as Tyra was safely in her car, she thumped her forehead against the steering wheel. “Boys…”


End file.
